What are the 3 pillars of Scrum? This is a one question I love to ask leaders, Scrum Masters, Product Owners and members of development teams as I engage with them, trying to help with their agile adoption. The statement “our team is already agile” is commonly heard but what is being referred to is the fact that the teams are conducting Scrum events (sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review and sprint retrospective), connecting these events to agility and keeping the ideas of transparency, inspection and adaptation on the side.
Limiting the idea of agile adoption to just events and practices is a clear indication of the missing understanding of the core mindset of agile and Scrum and instead, the use of Scrum as a process control method.
The simplistic design of Scrum framework and the embedded practices are the heart of creating a agile culture for software development. Every event in Scrum is conducted to constantly put the 3 pillars of Scrum in practice to not only ensure adherence to the framework and its practices but also to have agility embedded to the people and process aspects of product development.
Most common examples of situations when transparency, inspection and adaptation are overshadowed by other “not” important decisions are:
– What is the buffer we should account for during the sprint to account for unplanned work? This is a step in the wrong direction from a transparency perspective. Team should rather allow for unplanned work to impact work so that delays become visible and the team can assess the reason behind unplanned work and adapt by working with the Product Owner to make the right decision.
– Our/Your burn down does not look good. This is commonly bought up as an issue by the Scrum Master or the management and can take the focus of the team from getting the sprint forecast accomplished to making the burn down look good. It is important to understand that the burn down was not created to paint a good picture of the team but to transparently surface delays so that the team can collaborate and plan for the work to be done to possibly meet the forecast.
– Get the stories to “done” by moving the undone tasks to a new story. The “Definition of Done” is sacred to the team and is created with an intent of ensuring that the story accomplished is in a state to be released into production. However; creation of new stories with an intention of claiming browny points for work done or delaying defects for later is a common cause of delays and reduced quality.
There are many such behaviors and conversations that you will observe in your teams and the easiest way to make the right decision is to go back to the 3 pillars and make a decision keeping them in perspective. This is what I do while coaching team and it is what teams should do to create a culture of agility.
Remember, Scrum does not solve problems, it exposes them
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