Remember that Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and that adaptation is the third pillar, following transparency and inspection.
Each of the Scrum accountabilities participates in one or more adaptations. If you feel that something needs to be adapted to any aspect of your initiative, check who could best start taking action.
👉 Adaptation is making adjustments in order to minimise any deviations to acceptable limits related to agreed goals.
Let’s take the Scrum Master.
The Scrum Master is accountable for establishing Scrum as defined in the Scrum Guide. Yet s/he cannot do this alone… S/he fulfills this accountability by helping everyone understand the intent of the Scrum concepts, and supporting the team to implement Scrum. As such the Scrum Master does not make any adaptations her/himself directly, yet supports the Scrum Team to adapt.
- Support your Scrum Team with Product Backlog management. Are the adaptations made in this area bringing the team closer to their goals? What else could the team do to make it even better?
- Support your Scrum Team with reaching their quality goals. Are the adaptations they are making in their processes and tools supporting this? What else could the team do to make it even better?
- Support your Scrum Team in cross-functionality. Are they growing their skills in a way that helps them reach their goals? What else could they do?
- Support the organisation in their interactions with the Scrum Team. Are the adaptations they are making to their interactions really helping the Scrum Team and the organisation reaching the goals? What else could they do?
- Support the Scrum Team in …
A lot of reflections to be made. And out of the whole list of next steps the team could make, decide as Scrum Master what you feel is most valuable and what you want to bring to their attention. What practices or techniques can you suggest? How can you facilitate them so they make these (or other) reflections themselves?
Use all of the Scrum Events and Artifacts to support the Scrum Team in adapting towards better achieving their goals.
Summary:
In order to fulfil her/his accountability, the Scrum Master facilitates the Scrum Team so they themselves identify what brings most value when adapting their Scrum Artifacts, the Definition of Done and the way of working. All in order to reach their goals as agreed in the Product Goal, the Sprint Goal, and the Definition of Done (quality goal).
Remember: you cannot change people, only their environment so they decide themselves to behave differently.
Prompt
Together with your Scrum Team, evaluate your adaptations from a Scrum Master perspective:
Is the work, the adaptations made or planned to be made on...
- the Product Backlog,
- the Sprint Backlog,
- the Increment,
- the Definition of Done,
- the Individuals & interactions, processes, and tools
getting you closer to the quality, Sprint, and Product Goal.
And are these in line with the intent of the Scrum Guide?
I hope you find value in these short posts and if you are looking for more clarifications, feel free to take contact.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the core concepts we are covering in this blog series, then surely check out our Professional Scrum Mastery workshop. We have some scheduled in the coming period.
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