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 Product Developers.
The Developers are accountable for instilling quality while implementing Product Backlog Items in the next Increment. As such they of course adapt the product itself.
Remember where the required quality level is described?
In the Definition of Done (DoD) for the product. As such the Developers are also responsible that this DoD is improved. Based on learnings from each Sprint, the team is having their retrospective. As quality goals are clarified, the DoD needs to be adapted, as is the product itself.
Next to that, the Developers also keep their Sprint Backlog up-to-date. As they are evaluating their progress towards the Sprint Goal, they evaluate what the best next thing is they can do. They reflect this in their Sprint Backlog.
And they participate in the Retrospectives to adapt their way of working to reach their goal of improving effectiveness.
Summary:
In order to fulfil their accountability, the Developers actively participate in the adaptation of each of the Scrum artefacts, the Definition of Done and the way of working, during each of the Scrum Events. All in order to reach their goals as agreed in the Product Goal, the Sprint Goal, and the Definition of Done (quality goal).
Prompt
Together with your Scrum Team, evaluate your adaptations from a Developers 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.
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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