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Would you like to avoid the same trap many companies fall into when beginning with Scrum? Last week, I got a call from a new client and it became apparent they found themselves in the same swamp like many others after a few months of doing Scrum. The call went something like this.
Carlton: “Sooo…tell me some of the things that you have done so far.”
Client: “We started Scrum about two years ago by sending some people to Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course.”
Carlton: “OK – good. Education is a good place to start. So then what happened?”
Client: “Not much. We thought more would have happened, but after eight to ten weeks everything pretty much stalled out.”
While education is a good place to start, unless people being to change their behaviors and ways of working together not much is going to happen. I have found the best way to encourage new, more healthy behaviors is to change the constraints of the system. Once the new constraints are in place, the job of a ScrumMaster (or change agent or consultant) is to observe how the Scrum Team self-organizes into a new set of behaviors and nudge the Scrum Team (and the business) in the right direction. To help you with finding the right set of constraints that support Scrum, I am going to offer a list of constraints first identified by long time Certified Scrum Trainer Michael James. His work is consistent with my experience as well.
A word of caution, one thing that I have observed that does NOT work is being flexible with the constraints. If you change the constraints, you change the behaviors of the Scrum Team. These constraints encourage people to work in a way that is more Scrum-like, which I am assuming that is your goal. If that is not your goal, then pick and choose the constraints you want. If you are interested in doing Scrum, stick with these constraints. Additionally, I find when more constraints are in place and the stronger the organization respects the constraints, the faster the Scrum Teams take off and the less danger the organization has of stalling out. Finally, I find when the constraints are removed or are seriously weakened, the Scrum Teams tend to self-organize back into their old patterns of working.
The original draft of this article included all nine common constraints necessary to support an organization’s successful adoption of Scrum, but it was getting too long. Come back in a few days and I will share the rest of the list.