Daily Scrum and Scrum Everyday
Heart is Empiricism: Transparency, inspection and adaption
Below quote is more in context to the current topic:
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. There are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know”. — Donald Rumsfeld
Scrum an analogy of evolution with a promise to discovery and delivery in a continuous process; It is to see/research and learn what is going on; what are the unknowns and then evolve from the feedback/Failures, in repeating cycles.
Is Scrum a Method or Framework?
Most of the Scrum practitioners use the above terms interchangeably, it is a common confusion across organizations and groups practicing scrum. Scrum by Book clarifies this; “Scrum is not a process, technique, or definitive method”. As per scrum guide, scrum is a process framework within which one can apply various processes and techniques to deliver product solutions that delivers highest — value at low-cost in iterative increments. Various techniques utilized by Scrum teams, to perform their roles (Scrum master, Product Owner and Dev team) following the rules (procedure to carry out sprint/sprint backlog, review, retro, ..etc) for conducting various events or ceremonies prescribed to deliver artifacts(Increment/potentially releasable piece of application).
Every project should have goal and purpose to achieve; this keeps the team working on it motivated and sets a direction; Goal can be understood as a future state of us; and objective will be the practical, well defined path/tactic/technique to achieve the goal.
Heart of True Scrum is “Empiricism”:
Scrum by book emphasizes on “Empiricism (noun: the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience)”, in a layman term learn and adjust based on experience and knowledge, making informed decisions taking account and control dependencies and risks.
Without a purpose/vision/goal, there is no room of opportunity for employing Empiricism; Without goal, team loses the motivation for improvement, that would result in losing track of progress i.e., transparency, and without a goal inspection and adaptation will fall apart.
3 pillars of empirical process:
- Transparency,
- Inspection and
- Adaptation
Getting things correct in the first attempt is always a difficult task; and scrum feeds on the idea of continuous user feedback (Pillars of Empiricism: Transparency, Inspection and Adaption);
Avoiding too many deviations in the expected outcome; Key is improving and/or improvise in repeating cycles, adapting to the environment based on the feedback and delivering the increment without compromising on the quality of the Increment.
A happy customer (internal/External) would always generate more business.
In Scrum, each iteration is called a sprint (time-boxed event). This is the container for all activities carried out in building a potential releasable increment. Time duration or length of the sprint is fixed; Other event end when their purpose is accomplished.
*Ensures the activity is executed.
Continuous inspection reduces the feedback loop from users; and adapting to the outcome will result in a usable product; Objective to improve the product and thereby the process to deliver a higher value is always at the horizon; Perfection is a journey and can be attained by following through.
Each iteration promotes visibility/transparency, generates user feedback an opportunity to inspect, improves knowledge base, responses to known-unknowns and /or unknown-unknowns to known;
Just as in any video game or a sport:
To understand the intensity of the situation players usually analyse the past performance data; to plan their action of defense or offence; This could be synonymous to developing from a predictor model.
Players offten improvise and
?????in the situation first perform an act/activity), learn from experience and adapt to the environment for success.
Improvements or variances from desired outcomes should be identified at an early stage and mitigated by making required adjustments to plan without delays; may result in avoiding further deviation, saving cost, time, efforts and manpower. This can be beneficial only by employing periodic inspection of artifacts and progress towards the goal.
Understanding and application of scrum values will bring scrum pillars to life.
Scrum; “It is a framework (the “easy to learn” part) that will not deliver on its promise unless it is exercised with its core values (the “hard to do” part).” — Scrum Handbook by Jeff southerland
