Building on Part 1 here, it crucial for leaders to help teams connect with proven concepts, enabling them to apply those in a way that fits their unique context.
In this article we will explore some fundamental concepts from Scrum and, most importantly, why they are crucial for improving product development flow.
#1. Making work visible
Making work visible means complete transparency around each team member’s tasks, upcoming work for the team and any insights from completed work. This typically involves a shared visual representation that is accessible to everyone.
Scrum teams make work visible through a variety of tools and practices, such as Scrum boards, Burndown and Burnup charts, demos, and retrospective boards.
When teams leverage visibility to surface important and relevant context, it allows each team member to contribute their expertise to discussions and help resolve issues, harnessing the collective strength of the group. This approach also reduces misunderstandings and rework. Additionally, visibility promotes accountability and ownership, helping to build a culture of trust and responsibility.
Initially it may take time and effort but as teams become more familiar with each other and establish best practices around visibility, communication typically becomes much more efficient.
#2. Close Collaboration
Close collaboration in teams means that team members work closely together, share information, ideas and expertise to achieve common goals. It involves frequent communication, mutual support and a high level of trust, where everyone contributes actively and is aligned on objectives.
Scrum promotes collaboration through cross-functional teams that eliminate silos and foster teamwork. In addition Scrum events such as Daily Scrums, Sprint Planning, Reviews, and Retrospectives aim to ensure strong alignment.
Other benefits include fostering innovation, ensuring alignment with goals, strengthening accountability and even boosting morale by creating a supportive and motivated team environment.
#3. Breaking Work Down
In Scrum, breaking the work down refers to the process of taking larger, high-level work items and splitting them into smaller, more manageable pieces. During the exercise of breaking work down, vertical slicing is another key practice, meaning breaking the work down into end-to-end functional pieces of value.
Scrum teams break work down through practices like Backlog Refinement, where large pieces of work (e.g. Epics) are split into smaller User Stories, as well as Sprint Planning, where User Stories are divided into actionable tasks. As part of those practices, standards such as the Definition of Done and Acceptance Criteria are applied to ensure that work is well-defined and will lead to high quality outcomes.
Breaking work down in Scrum is also crucial because a focus on smaller, manageable tasks enables faster progress and more frequent feedback loops with everyone involved. It also improves estimation and predictability, which leads to better planning.
#4. Clearing Blockers
In Scrum, blockers are obstacles that impede progress and can stem from various sources, including technical constraints and risks, people or equipment limitations, dependencies, unclear requirements, team conflicts or factors external to the team.
Blockers are usually identified in the Daily Scrum and can be assigned to anyone in the team with the required expertise to resolve them as quickly as possible.
Blockers can also reduce predictability, making it harder to plan and deliver value on time. And, if not addressed quickly, they can impact team morale, collaboration and overall productivity.
#5. Incremental Delivery
Incremental delivery in Scrum means delivering small, functional parts of the product at the end of each time-boxed iteration.
Teams focus on breaking down work and setting small, achievable goals for each increment. They also prioritize frequent releases of valuable functionality for customers.