INNOVATION IS ABOUT DOING: How Scrum can help deliver inspired results  The  guide  provides  an  overview  of  Scrum,  suggests  a  case  for  applying  it  to  workforce  development  challenges,  and  offers  a  list  of  resources  where  you  can  learn  more.    

 Prepared  by:  Kristin  E.  Wolff  &  Vinz  Koller,    

Social  Policy  Research  Associates  

 March  2015  

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Table of Contents

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 This guide was created to support SPR’s Scrum Quickshop at the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) Annual Forum in March 2015. It provides a brief introduction to Scrum, offers lessons from a Scrum user, and cites a collection of multimedia resources that provides additional depth and breadth for those who want to give Scrum a go. If you are reading this prior to the Forum, please take this quick poll so we can design the session around your needs and interests: http://bit.ly/1AJ9jto

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Introduction:    Why  Scrum?  

The  Problem:  Too  Many  Waterfalls    

A  Solution:  Scrum   The  Values,  Ideas  (and  People)  Behind  Scrum  

The  Essentials  of  Scrum  

Scrum  and  Workforce  Development  

Lessons  from  a  Scrum  Novice    

Scrum  in  Ten  Steps     More  About  Scrum     About  Social  Policy  Research  Associates  (SPR)  

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Introduction: Why Scrum?

 Scrum  helped  the  FBI’s  internal  team  do  in  24  months  with  5%  of  the  total  budget  what  Lockheed  could  not  do  in  ten  years  with  90%  of  the  budget:  let  the  FBI  access  its  own  knowledge.    

 Scrum is a framework. It provides a structure that helps teams align around common goals, learn quickly (and collectively), and accelerate productivity so they can deliver more, better, faster, and with greater satisfaction than is common using traditional planning approaches.

 Scrum is an antidote to many of the things that get in the way of group progress including: the tyranny of “the plan;” the blind-man-and-the- elephant problem (no one person able to see the big picture); sending information “up the chain” while awaiting decisions, and so on.

 It’s not a panacea for all that ails, but if your goal is to accelerate human

 progress – in particular, to move from idea to implementation quickly – Scrum can be a powerful ally.

 Over the long run, Scrum builds trust and cultivates the kinds of habits that lead to effective collaboration and increase innovation capacity – high levels of engagement, the ability to identify and commit to shared goals, risk tolerance, and an explicit focus on learning and documentation. This enables organizations and teams to develop effective solutions to new problems, not once, but over and over again.

We’ll  now  take  a  quick  look  at  the  roots  of  Scrum  together  with    its  key  components    and  find  out  why  it  is  such  a  powerful  way  to  support  the  way  we  work  (and  live)  today.  

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The Problem: Too Many Waterfalls

 Traditional project planning – using the waterfall method – can work where few variables are unknown. But as military generals, along with information technologists, have discovered, it is not well suited to developing new products and services or responding to unforeseen challenges. No matter how much planning occurs before project launch, unanticipated events and new ideas are inevitable. They can derail, delay, and otherwise compromise the ability of teams to move forward.

 “I  have  always  found  that  plans  are  useless,  but  planning  is  indispensable.”                                    Dwight  D.  Eisenhower    

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The waterfall method – so named because its reflection on a Gantt chart often looks much like a waterfall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model

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A Solution: Scrum

 Scrum embraces uncertainty, treating every project as process of learning in which the product is tested and improved throughout its development. It offers a process for integrating changes (or not) and a method for dealing with barriers as they (inevitably) emerge.

 “At  its  root,  Scrum  is  based  on  a  simple  idea:  whenever  you  start  a  project,  why  not  regularly  check  in,  see  if  what  you’re  doing  is  heading  in  the  right  direction,  and  if  it’s  actually  what  people  want?  And  question  whether  there  are  any  ways  to  improve  how  you’re  doing  what  you’re  doing,  any  ways  of  doing  it  better  and  faster,  and  what  might  be  keeping  you  from  doing  that.”  

 Jeff  Sutherland  

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The Values, Ideas (and People) Behind Scrum

 Scrum prioritizes applied learning in service of excellence and efficiency:

§  It loves clarity and does not love waste.

§  It emphasizes taking in information that helps determine options for action (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act).

§  It rests on highly-engaged teams that are cross-functional (and not rooted in hierarchy), autonomous, empowered, and purpose-driven.

§  It employs a version of Deming’s long-tested Plan/Do/Check/Act cycle that build continuous improvement into the development process.

§  It forces priority setting, insists on focus, and uses precise language and metrics (e.g., “half-done is not done”) to guide activity.

§  It encourages mastery of process – and then invites creativity.

§  It is human – it builds on patterns of human behavior and cultivates trusted relationships, reducing the likelihood of political and social barriers that can interfere with team progress.

In  2001,  a  group  of  technology    luminaries  developed  what  has  come  to  be  known  as  “The  Agile  Manifesto”  –  a  statement  of  four  values  and  12  principles    intended  to  guide  product  development.    

Scrum  is  a  framework  for  putting  these  values  into  practice.  

http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html  

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The Essentials of Scrum

 Processes  The Sprint is the defined time-period (one month or less) in which a goal is accomplished. This requires Sprint planning in which the goal is determined realistic and the definition of “done” is agreed upon by all team members.

 The Daily Scrum is the 15-minute event in which team members meet to synchronize their activities in a structured way.

 Reviews and Retrospectives are events that build learning and improvement into the Sprint process.

 

 Technologies & Tools  The Product Road Map (or Backlog) is a living document that serves as the sole source of information defining the product/project requirements

 The Scrum Board is a large, visible, shared tracking systems in which team members document what needs doing, what is in process, and what is complete throughout the life of a Sprint.

 People  Teams are the main actors, not individuals. Heroes and heroic behaviors are unwelcome.

 All people engaged in the process have clear roles: the Product Owner holds the vision and stewards the project; the Scrum Master guides team activity using Scrum tools and rules; and Team Members develop solutions iteratively, improving with each Sprint (and Sprint cycle). Members are responsible to one another independent of rank or hierarchy outside the team.

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Scrum and Workforce Development

 Can  Scrum  transform  the  way  workforce  partners  collaborate?    Help  them  to  do  more  with  less,  build  skills,  and  deliver  more  value  to  customers  and  stakeholders?    Even  have  fun  in  the  process?  We  think  so.  

 Unemployment. Skills gaps. Employee engagement. Wage stagnation. Poverty.

 We need better solutions to our most important workforce challenges. As stewards of workforce policy and resources, state and local workforce boards have important roles to play in identifying and prioritizing those challenges, and designing new solutions suited their communities.

 Toward that end, workforce boards collaborate with partner agencies, businesses, and non-profit, philanthropic, and civic organizations –even with customers. They support

 task forces, alliances, and increasingly, backbone organizations.

 Such partnerships can yield important insights and bring new resources to shared goals.

 But the gap between developing a shared strategy and implementing it can be significant, especially when the strategy spans organizations or political jurisdictions.

 Scrum can help close this gap. It offers stakeholders practical ways to work together to accomplish big things in a short period of time. It can also provide a vehicle for engaging stakeholders in not just strategy and policy development, but in the design of programs and tools themselves.

 Scrum is proven and it is scaleable. Over time, it can be transformative – helping turn innovation into a core competency rather than a special occasion.

Lessons from a Scrum Novice

We’ve  experimented  with  Scrum  in  a  variety  of  contexts:    

•  Within  a  nonprofit  organization  –  at  the  Board  level  and  collectively  with  staff  

•  Within  a  small  private-­‐sector  firm  

•  In-­‐person  and  at  a  distance  

•  During  events  not  necessarily  embedded  in  an  everyday  work  context.  

We’re  sharing  what  we  learned  with  the  following  caveats:  

•  We  are  self-­‐taught  –  no    certified  Scrum  Masters  among  us.  

•  We  did  not  strictly  adhere  to  all  of  the  rules,  nor    did  we  adhere  to  all  of  the  rules  equally  strictly.  

•  We  collected  lessons    in  real  time  and  retrospectively,  drawing  from    Scrum-­‐like  approaches  we  had  used  previously.  

 

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Scrum. Simple to understand. Tough to do. Worth a try.

 Lesson #1: Much of the Scrum framework is simply good project management. Take the transparency that a Project Map (Backlog) invites. Simply making the entire list of tasks and progress visible vastly increased the frequency and relevance of communication among team members. (In contrast, when was the last time you collaborated effectively over a Gantt chart?)

 Lesson #2: Hackers and Millennials were quick to embrace Scrum. Among the team members in a few projects were “camp” alumni – people who had participated in hackathons, barcamps, and similar intense personal or professional development experiences. For them, as well as for younger workers, Scrum felt familiar – the intensity, the team-orientation, the tools, etc. – and was quickly embraced. More senior team members tended to struggle with the absence of traditional leaders or predictable hierarchy, and felt the Sprints were, at times, too chaotic. But all team members responded positively to the intensity and focus of team activity.

 Lesson #3: You can’t Sprint forever. Scrum is a framework for accelerating human progress. If it is a hammer, then not every human endeavor is a nail. It is most effective when thoughtfully employed – people, team, organizations need other ways of working together too.

 Lesson #4: Adopting partial practices can work if the goal is as much about culture change as product delivery. We employed the basics – the map, the questions, the time-box, and the reviews, but we also shared the role of Scrum Master, shifted team members, and moved deadlines. The result was very high engagement – especially among the initial skeptics – and the products and speed of delivery exceeded expectations nearly every time. As importantly, the approach changed the way team members interacted with one another. After a few quick wins, “rank” disappeared. Scrum enabled unlikely teams to collaborate quickly and effectively on work that really mattered to their organizations, firms, Boards, professional fields, or to them as individuals.

 “The  combination  of  structure,  creativity,  and  intensity  helped  us  get  much  further  than  I  thought  we  would  in  a  couple  of  weeks.  It  was  actually  pretty  fun.”  Nonprofit  Board  Member  and  First-­‐time  Scrum  participant.    

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Scrum in Ten Steps

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 What project in your portfolio lends itself to Scrum? Who is on your Scrum team? Get ready....

 Source: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (Jeff Sutherland, 2014). These steps have been slightly modified from the original presented in the Appendix: Implementing Scrum—How to Begin.

2 3 4 5 Identify  the    Product  Owner  

6 7 8 9 10

Holds  the  vision  and  knows  the  risks/rewards  

3-­‐9  people  with  all  the  necessary    skills      

Serves  as  coach  and  barrier  buster.    

Everything  that  needs  doing,  prioritized.  

Level  of  effort  vs.  value,  definition  of  “done”  

First  scrum  meeting  –  team  defines  length  of  sprint  (usually  2-­‐3  weeks)  and  scope  of  work  

Scrum  Board  of  three  columns  –  Do  ,  Doing,  Done  –  populated  with  sticky  notes    

15  mins,  3  questions:    What  did  you  do  yesterday?  What  will  you  do  today?  Are  there  any  obstacles?  

Public  demonstration  of  what  was  accomplished  during  the  sprint.      

Process  review  after  last  sprint:  What  went  well?  What  can  be  made  better  in  next  sprint?    

Assemble    the    Team  

Identify  the    Scrum  Master  

Define  the      Product  Road  Map  

Develop  real  effort      Estimate  

Plan  the  Sprint    

Make  work    Visible  

Employ  a      Daily  Scrum  

Implement  the    Sprint  Demo    

 Retrospect  to  inform  next  Sprint  Cycle  

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For More Information

 Things  to  Read   Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time Jeff  Sutherland,  2014  

The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game Ken  Schwaber  &  Jeff  Sutherland,  2013  

 Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything Steve  Blank,  2013  http://bit.ly/1CJSs4A  

 Scrum: A Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction Chris  Simms  &      Hillary  Louise  Johnson,  2012  

 The Best Kept Management Secret on the Planet: Agile Steve  Denning  in  Forbes,  2012  (Accompanied  by  some  nice  links)http://onforb.es/1EU03jq    

 Websites  

 Scrum.org ScrumAlliance.org AgileLearningLabs.com

 Things  to  Watch  

 Scrum: The Future of Work http://bit.ly/1Le8VEB  

 Scrum in Seven Minutes http://bit.ly/17rGpAl  

 Implementing Scrum in a Non-Engineering Team http://bit.ly/1AmdFmL  

 

 

 Things  to  Listen  to  

 LabCast: Reaching Your Full Potential with Scrum http://bit.ly/19xS6Hd  

 A Tale of Two Scrums: Agile Done Right and Agile Gone Wrong http://bit.ly/1CJxu8D  

 Scrum One, Scrum All: Why Agile Isn’t Just for Technical Teams http://bit.ly/19xT1r4  

(This  last  one  offers  nice  links  for  the  non-­‐technical).  

 

 

 

 

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About Social Policy Research Associates (SPR)

For over two decades, SPR has provided rigorous research and evaluation and unparalleled technical assistance and training services to programs and agencies supported by: the US Departments of Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development; foundations and nonprofit organizations serving young people and those with barriers to employment; and policy organizations and boards providing community leadership in the areas of education and employment.

 Find us:

spra.com 1333 Broadway, Suite 310 Oakland, CA 94612 510.763.1499

 Questions?

 Vinz Koller, Director of Technical Assistance & Training vinz_koller@spra.com

 Kristin Wolff, Senior Associate kwolff@thinkers-and-doers.com

 

We  help  frame,  launch,  support,  and  evaluate  programs  that  improve  lives,  increase  prosperity,  and  enhance  communities  for  government,  business,  and  philanthropy  sector  clients.