Why you definitely need to learn what Scrum is

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Scrum is flexible project management, predictable product creation processes, effective work of teams and teams. Not knowing about Scrum becomes indecent today and impossible in the future.

Everyone has heard of Agile. If until recently someone might not have known this word, then in January of this year, German Gref himself, the head of Sberbank, began to attack the country with all his weapons with his evangelism of flexible approaches to management, and now Agile has already sounded for everyone.

Scrum is the practical implementation of Agile principles. It's an approach that allows, according to its creator Jeff Sutherland, to do twice as much in half the time.

You probably would like to know more about Agile and Scrum in order to be on the subject. The IT world can no longer be imagined without Agile, and this "infection" is rapidly spreading to traditional offline businesses.

To stay informed, you can read Jeff Sutherland's new book Scrum. A revolutionary method of project management”. This will take a few days. An alternative way to quickly read smart American business books is to read a short extract, retelling, summari from our partner - Smart Reading. It will take half an hour, and you will surely learn all the key ideas without water.

Scrum emerged about 20 years ago as an effective method of increasing productivity in software development. Having gained popularity in Silicon Valley, Scrum quickly gained acceptance in other business sectors. Its creators Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland studied the best international practices of successful companies and came to the conclusion that the “waterfall” model, which was used to build work on IT projects, is hopelessly outdated. It didn’t meet the expectations of the clients, because the work progressed slowly, in strict accordance with the long-term plan, and often the result was not the product that was actually needed.

Systematic top-down project management creates the illusion of control and confidence in the process of work, but in reality the result is unpredictable. Despite the presence of kilograms of paper with detailed plans, justifications, charts and tables, deadlines are missed, the budget is exceeded, and employees are disappointed, feeling the futility of their activities.

Get to know the key principles of Scrum, and, perhaps, the topic will interest you so much that you will not be able not to read Sutherland's book.

People are more important than processes

In companies of all sizes, the first thing bureaucracy takes is to build processes, believing that disorganization is the root of all problems. But if this root exists, then it is employees who are dissatisfied with their work, ignoring customers and their needs, unable to realize their potential, to take place. They spoil everything.

Scrum is about happy employees, not about infinitely slender and expensive processes.

Come to your office tomorrow and you will surely see many such people there. It is important to put people at the center of the organization, not bosses or processes.

Product is more important than documentation

Another favorite pastime of the bureaucracy is to endlessly describe everything, create tons of documentation, spend a good half of the resources on this, thus delaying the deadlines. It is not the paperwork that matters, but whether your organization, your team succeeds in creating exactly the product that customers really need. If you have a great product and no documentation, that's not a bad thing. This is how the first iPhone entered the market in 2007.

Scrum is about meaning, not about creating as many pieces of paper as possible for the sake of creating as many pieces of paper as possible.

The colossal internal documentation and description of your every step on the way to the finished product is probably also important, but an increasing number of companies now manage without this nonsense. And they are your competitors. Your competitors are faster and faster.

Cooperation with a client is more important than a perfectly drawn up contract

To make a good product, you need to work, create, solve problems, come up with and implement ideas. All that distracts from this is garbage. You need to build such a relationship with the customer so that he constantly participates in your work, sees what the product will be if you follow the current strategy, and understands the prospects for obtaining a product that suits him. This can be done if you have a relationship with the customer, not just a contract.

Scrum is about understanding and collaboration, not about lawyers and covering up a soft spot.

It is necessary to build such a relationship with the client when you do not need to exchange endless and lifeless paper requirements and conditions and conclude bundles of contracts. The ideal situation is when you are kind and understanding partners, companions, working towards the same goal, and you do not need to be insured by contracts and spend a significant amount of time on this. Contracts and pieces of paper are a way to protect yourself. Build a relationship in which neither side needs to defend.

The ability to change is more important than following plans

They say that the worst thing is to make a product all your life that in the end no one has used. Imagine, you have been developing something for three years that then did not fly, as it turned out to be unclaimed in the market. This is due to the grandiose plans drawn up at the start, and the exact adherence to them. What if the three-year plan was wrong? You will spend a lot of money and remain at a broken trough.

Scrum is about science and meaning, not about faith and unfounded hopes.

How to be? According to Scrum, you should have a big goal, but go towards it iteratively, without trying to predict every step you take in the distant future. In small iterations of 2-4 weeks, move towards the goal, look back, do a retrospective, evaluate what has been done, discard the result of the last iteration if it does not bring you closer to the goal. This way silly big failures can be avoided. Iteration is a scientific approach. Hopes for the correctness of big plans are more like religion.

Positions and titles are not important - what you do matters

The higher the level of the chief, the less he knows directly about the creation of a product and the intricacies of its work, its properties, capabilities. Today, approaches to management are fashionable, when bosses are no longer needed, hierarchies are erased, organizations become flat. Positions are not important when it comes to practical work on creating a product, researching user needs, testing various hypotheses, and actively developing iteratively.

Scrum is about trust, not power and violence.

Classic bosses are made for control and repression. If the team consists of committed professionals who are trusted and who are directly involved in creating value, then they do not need a supervisor with a beautiful but useless title.

Around these core Scrum principles, various tools have been created to help achieve goals in the shortest possible time, with a high level of predictability, and at the lowest cost. Be sure to immerse yourself in this topic: it is interesting and, most likely, without knowledge of Agile and Scrum in the future, you will not be able to get an interesting and highly paid job at the same time.

So, you can find out in depth everything about Scrum from the book by its creator Jeff Sutherland. Alternatively, you can read the summari of this book in the Smart Reading electronic library in 20-30 minutes.

Lifehacker and Smart Reading suggest trying this new way to quickly learn the essence of very smart, but very thick books. There are several hundred more summari great books waiting for you on the Smart Reading site, which you may never fully read.