The Ambiguity of Scrum Ceremonies
From repetitive rituals to creative sources of team energy
Having experienced working with teams for many years I am constantly surprised about the way how differently scrum ceremonies are interpreted. The scrum framework suggests having regular scrum rituals (such as daily scrum, sprint planning, sprint review, sprint retrospective, refinement meetings) but sometimes they turn into a perceived rigid corsage for many team members.
Have you observed any of these symptoms in your scrum ceremonies?
- Daily Scrum meetings become very functional focusing on pushing the items through the sprint to be ‘DONE’ to satisfy the progress pressure from stakeholders and customers.
- Sprint planning meetings converge subconsciously into work distribution meetings over time coloured in project management directive style.
- Though working software is being demonstrated, sprint review meetings tend to dry out and evolve into reporting meetings towards stakeholders/customer.
- Fruitful and generative discussions in sprint reviews are omitted to save time spent in meetings with the goal to be efficient rather than effective.
- Sprint Refinements turn into monologues explanations about Product Backlog Items. Only a few team members engage in the discussion with a rather passive team audience, wondering how to contribute.
If any of those aspects sound familiar, I invite you to read on ….
The intention of scrum ceremonies is to establish a common heartbeat for a team, a rhythm that makes complexity digestible. They serve to focus on accomplishing the highest priority work items in a regular time span without pressure in a sustainable pace.
More importantly, the big idea behind collaborative teamwork engaging in scrum ceremonies is to utilize the collective intuition and competence. Gathering in one room team members create a space for improving the product and thinking about innovative technical solutions to the customer’s benefit whilst implementing.
My observation is that during the lifetime of a project this idea seems to deteriorate or may have not been understood right from start.
Nevertheless, the repetitiveness of rituals and the developers ’paradigm of ‘only working on code is real work’ often turns into a gradual degradation of effectiveness. Let’s elaborate this aspect.
Why do scrum rituals are prone to become ineffective?
The original intent of scrum ceremonies is to create an energizing effect. But as time goes by small step linear thinking processes influence the project team members. This may occur due to imposed daily routine ‘reporting’ which often prevents to see the big picture, thereby, suffocating active engagement.
Other factors such as rigid timeboxing, constantly overrun timeboxes, lack of focus or mixing up meeting purposes and endlessly excessive ping-pong debates contribute to ineffectiveness. This results in loss of faith in the usefulness of scrum ceremonies.
The recurrence of sprint ceremonies during the sprint implies that everyone is expected to fully comprehend where the product development is heading for and neglects the importance of re-energizing the team spirit with meaningfulness.
This influences the product creation itself which deteriorates to a process with pure focus on ‘getting things done’ rather than standing on the tip of the toes to watch out for creative pragmatic solutions.
What are root causes of deteriorating scrum ceremonies?
‘There are too many meetings, I do not have time to do REAL work’, is a favourite complaint to justify ‘no show’ or to silently withdraw from active engagement in scrum ceremonies.
The strictness of a set time box in scrum ritualized ceremonies, when adhered to religiously, may drown a fruitful exchange on emerging ideas. This may suffocate the emotional energy for inspirational thoughts.
The nature of complex discussions often intimidates quiet or junior developers to withhold their valuable contribution.
The presence of dominating personalities debating relentlessly for the sake of it with open ends or team members who lose themselves in detail questions get stuck in problem talk.
As a response the remaining in silence or continuing to work on something else with head down on the laptop are popular ways to withdraw from any engagement in the scrum meeting.
All these behaviour patterns are trials to get through the unliked meeting situation with as much ease as possible.
The result is
- a feeling of ineffective investing of time for low value of meeting result
- individuals’ unpleasant experience repeats itself and reduces the energy level in a team
This may also reflect in hearing statements about belittling the meaningfulness of scrum ceremonies and openly disrespecting ground rules in a team’s way of working.
The most popular thought: ‘Let’s go back to do real work’ limits the view of team members to the rim of their teacup and actually translates to a mindset of ‘meetings are waste of time’.
BUT: It is not only about analyzing users’ needs and developing software code to meet those needs.
A broader understanding about the whole product, customer’s existing programs and systems is needed in order to be able to recommend software upgrades, to design each piece of an application or system and to plan how the pieces will work together.
‘Let’s go back to do real work’ mindset bears the danger to turn a blind eye to all the aspects that are key ingredients of agility.
What are the consequences of ‘meetings are waste of time’ mentality?
It limits the harvesting of the team’s competence and diminishes the opportunities for a broader scope of a team’s competence build up.
It undermines the team’s discipline and morale to work and feel as a team.
Thereby, the relatedness between team members decays.
It increases the probability of singularization, which in turn may cause defensive behaviour in individuals when being questioned due to a feeling of vulnerability without the backing of a team.
It ignores the fact that jointly building the understanding of the product means gaining energy and motivation for everyone.
It disregards the value of collective intuition and tacit knowledge derived from networking closely together (e.g., solution ideation, product modifications ideas).
It bears behaviour that segregates and polarizes opinions rather than nourishing integrative behaviour and finding constructive even better solutions in discussions.
It deprecates the spending of time with colleagues, thereby preventing enthusiasm for joining up for creative work in a successful agile work environment.
What are key ingredients for ‘successful’ agility in a team?
For achieving a creative and valuable solution which delights a customer, it is essential that ALL team members’ are given the opportunity to grow, utilize and inject their talents and resourcefulness.
It is essential that the team understands all aspects of the complexity at hand and have a common view on the big picture with all the collective experience.
Feeling relatedness among a team is the foundation for trust and working on eye-level with each other regardless of age, competence, origin, difference of skills and abilities.
Work becomes enjoyable if everyone feels connected to a meaningful purpose, being able to contribute, which in turn impacts a team’s motivation and performance immensely.
Rituals, represented by scrum meetings, are the glue and the platform which makes resourcefulness of everyone come to light.
Rituals strengthen the relations inside the team, re-connect a meaningful purpose to the team’s mission and the big picture becomes tangible in the everyday routine.
How Rituals affect the subconsciousness
Let’s take a closer look at rituals from a neurobiological perspective:
Scrum ceremonies are ritually executed at a given time in a pre-defined frequency. The ritualized schedule of regular meetings imprints an experience pattern in a human brain that can be described as a subconscious regular script.
Each team member gets accustomed to this subconscious regular script as time goes by. It is like re-entering the same road every day in the brain, with the same signposts and the same passengers, passing by whatever comes.
The major advantage of regular meeting schedules is to offload the brain from routine tasks. It enables to focus on content of work, rather than administrating the workload.
It enables a team to commonly adapt the view of the product and progress and think through together as a team what is at hand to do, what to change or to optimize.
The nature of rituals, such as a scrum ceremony contains several ‘structural acts’, such as
- taking place on same day, same time in regular intervals
- opening of the meeting
- individuals presenting their share to the purpose of the meeting (diverging)
- engaging increments of discussions
- gaining insights
- common opinion building (converging)
- decision forming, deciding and committing on actions
- concluding the meeting
These structural acts are meant to strengthen and regulate the team’s process on the one hand and, on the other hand, serve to inspire the team’s ambition for creative solution finding regarding the product development.
Rituals activate a person’s ‘subconscious’ script of accustomed behaviour and communication style.
As soon as a scrum ceremony begins, participants instantly get into their comfort zone if nothing taps their interest or concern.
An emotional spark needs to be ignited to leave the main mental road of thought, that individuals are used to and to open up for new directions of thinking.
How to revive and tap on people’s energy in scrum meetings?
One essential step is to revive the significance of the meeting by loading it with emotional energy.
This can be done by emphasizing the truly intended meaning and explicitly stating:
For WHAT purpose do we do THIS scrum ceremony?
Not only the pure functional purpose described in the scrum guide should be mentioned.
Instead, the underlying goal of a meaningful well accepted purpose of the product development and its connection to the underlying business goal should always be highlighted and repeated to fuel the scrum ceremony with emotional energy.
Feeling the importance of one’s own contribution to the whole and being able to relate to the contributions of team colleagues lays the foundation for identification with one’s own doing.
Pending the context, it is important to
- emphasize the importance to mutually exchange opinions and hear everyone’s voice to pave way for discussion on eye level, thereby, utilizing everyone’s competence (resourcefulness)
- visualize complex discussion topics and outcomes
- ensure that the right people (e.g., experts from other teams, disciplines, or domains, needed stakeholder, infrastructure) are involved and relate to each other (relatedness).
- Frame and recap the context, explain the why and the meaningful purpose so that participants feel emotionally engaged and can easily relate to the discussion topics and their individual work. (meaningfulness)
- If the opportunity of learning is explicitly emphasized, it opens room for basic questions and encourages everyone to feel important as knowledgeable individuals. This creates a pride of resourcefulness and enhances the confidence to contribute on eye level.
Meaningfulness, relatedness and recognizing the individuals’ and team’s resourcefulness tap on people’s emotions. They create psychological safety and self-confidence. Both is the foundation to become creative and receptive for other person’s creative energy and thoughts.
Summary
Scrum ceremonies are not only the backbone of a scrum team to organize the tasks forward looking, but they represent the heartbeat of a team. They serve as fora for mutual exchange, common learning and sharing of experiences of one another. They also serve for utilizing each other’s strengths for the team’s common mission, finding new ways of strengthening relations and reinforcing mutual trust.
One of the most important outcomes and expectations on scrum ceremonies is not only to establish the common heartbeat but also to reveal people’s talents and alleviate creative energy.
Often these aspects are drowning in the heat of the daily business and the short-sighted focus on the actual sprint scope, losing connection to the big picture.
Coming together, forming a pool of knowledge, relating to one another’s capabilities, re-enforcing the common interest and re-connecting to the context is a team’s door opener for new ideas, fruitful discussions. Following the human inherent talents, we suggest some golden steps to guide a coach/scrum master/team in a project to turn each scrum ceremony into a pleasant energizing source of creativity and fun.
If you feel that your scrum ceremonies are draining rather than giving energy, reflect on whether you can give a twist to your meetings by following the golden steps…
- refuel the temperature gauge by repeating the purpose what you are here for to create meaningfulness for everyone
- focus on supporting excellent preparation of the ceremonies (e.g., spacious pleasant room, moderation, materials needed, right attendee list, focus of the meeting)
- turn the scrum ceremony to a fun place for togetherness and relatedness for trust and confidence by including elements of team building (e.g. round robin: tell something of yourself that no one (yet) got to know, tell the dumbest that ever happened to you)
- encourage attendee’s self-confidence (e.g. stress that every thought and question on the topic is helpful, everyone is needed…)
- strengthen the resourcefulness of each team member repeatedly by mirroring and apprecating their strengths and their achievements elaborately (e.g., instant, and constant feedback in the ceremony, make everyone feel proud of who they are)
- create context so that everyone can connect to the purpose
Feel the difference it makes!
From ritualized Scrum Ceremony to creative solution space made of positive team energy.
Further reading: Myth or Reality: Self-Organized Teams
Related Podcast: Myth or Reality: Self-Organized Teams:
Apple or Google or Web-Player
