Explain Scrum to a 6-year-old.

Imagine a game called — Sit on the Chair.

Adult: You are in a big room and the quest is to sit on the chair that is on the opposite side from you.

6YO: Oh, this sounds easy.

Adult: The challenge is that the room is completely dark and the chair may or may not move from its actual position. The chair may also disappear completely in which case the goal is to exit the room. The quicker you exit the room, better the score.

6YO: HA, that seems hard.

Adult: Wait, I forgot to mention one last thing. The light will turn on if you stop moving — but once you start moving the light will turn off again.

6YO: A easy. I walk one-two steps then stop, observe if the chair is in the same place or not, then I do one-two steps and repeat.

Adult: Interesting — this is Scrum. You did little planning followed by little work. Then you inspect the results and re-plan as necessary. And then, you would have repeated this until quest completion as in, sit on the chair or exit the room.

What can we take from this little story?

a) If you would gamble that the chair will not change its position and do all the walking in one run, it would be faster — but you probably would have missed the chair.

b) The chances of success increase if you regularly stop and observe the position of the chair.

c) Since inspection & adaptation is very easy (stop, lights turn on look around and move again) the 6YO chooses to do it very often.

In conclusion, the action to stop-review-adapt is a choice no matter the framework. And, the easier we make the stop-review-process the better the chances to actually do it.

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