IS SCRUM LIGHTWEIGHT?

Today companies started adapting Scrum, because of the benefits and advantages it brings into the business. Scrum Master is supposed to be a figure that helps and promotes collaboration and communication between teams. We often heard Scrum is easy to understand but difficult to master, is it true? And what this statement “scrum is lightweight” really tells us. In this blog, we will try to decrypt this statement and understand how Scrum Master brought a successful change in an organization.

Scrum and Scrum Team

A scrum team is basically a small group of teams that works in an adaptable framework that helps them to break down large projects into small values of work to build Adaptive solutions for complex problems. Scrum teams have defined goals and work is done in a time-box, this gives the ability to adapt to changing requirements in time.

Using this technique these teams get quick feedback and when products change quickly to please changing user preferences, that brings more satisfied customers, a better quality product, and a better-managed process. Also, this engagement brings a happier team, and this way Scrum Master is able to motivate the team and give better visibility into projects. 

What Makes Scrum Lightweight?

Scrum brings adaptable solutions to complicated problems and helps teams, lightweight scrum is based on agile values and maximizes response to customers, it is easy to understand.

The best way to learn Scrum is with a formula 3-5-3 

3 Accountabilities (Developers, Scrum Master, Product owner)

5 events (Sprint, Sprint planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective) 

3 Artifacts (Product backlog, Sprint backlog, Increment) 

Above simplicity is what makes scrum so lightweight and pretty easy. 

Before we jump to the conclusion that scrum is very easy we have to look into why it is easy to understand but Difficult to Master?

Scrum is a purposefully incomplete & a Minimum Framework as the co-creators of Scrum has defined the whole Scrum in a Scrum Guide which is only 14 Pages (Please refer www.scrumguides.org) 

Let’s deep dive to understand why Scrum is called Incomplete:

Anything we do today we need to understand 3 things associated with it “WHY”, “WHAT” & “How” now Scrum will not educate you on “HOW” instead only teach you “WHY” & “WHAT”

e.g: Scrum will tell you WHY you need a Product Backlog , WHAT  is a Product Backlog but not HOW to create a Product Backlog.

Now Scrum does this purposefully as it wants to give the right amount of flexibility and control to teams doing Scrum. While there are a lot of practitioners and experts whom you can learn on the “HOW”  , Scrum also promotes the culture of doing and learning.

How To Adopt A Successful Scrum Master Role?

There are several organizations that tailored scrum that has commenced within the right manner however presently falls down as they are not following scrum principle properly, and this is often when Scrum Master plays a really important role in the success of the team by facilitating the adoption of scrum and helps one another to achieve mastery over scrum principles. Scrum is based on the theory of EMPIRICISM which promotes Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation

A Scrum Master should follow and must inspire the team with core values of the scrum that contain openness, courage, commitment,respect and focus which brought the team together and promote better work values and practices 

So effectively a Great Scrum Master is like a gardener who nurtures all seeds with equality to help seeds grow into a tree.

Let’s Discuss Some Attributes A Scrum Master Should Have

As we now understand the scrum principles and values with a guiding to successful adoption, a Scrum Master should have these attributes too

• UNBIASED AND OPEN MIND:

Having an open mind helps the Scrum Master to treat each team differently. With different teams and team members with different personalities and levels of understanding; an open-minded Scrum Master could see things differently because solutions that work for one team or a team member may not work for others in a given situation.

• MOTIVATION FOR TEAM MEMBER

The main and fundamental task of a Scrum Master is to keep your team members happy and motivated which includes helping them to work according to the values and techniques of Scrum while removing obstacles that can affect the performance of your team.

• SHOW THE MIRROR

Scrum Master can use various Metrics to the team in a timely manner which keeps the entire team in check with their progress, this will help teams to achieve commitments and improve working practice in order to achieve better output and value.

• FOCUS ON CHALLENGES

Scrum projects come with a list of Complex issues and challenges, but an effective Scrum Master will be aware of all challenges that interfere with any project, this ability of Scrum Master keeps the team focused on the project and provides success by resolving these challenges early. 

• APPRECIATION FOR ACHIEVEMENTS

As we already understand that Scrum Master should always encourage and motivate the team, giving proper appreciation and celebrating achievements is equally important to keep teams more productive.

Note: There is no comprehensive defined list of Scrum Master attributes however the ones mentioned above are very critical for a Scrum Master Success

Conclusion

Nowadays, the Scrum framework is the most practiced framework in almost every organization. Even if it is the most used framework, companies still need to uncover some lessons of the scrum before commencing a transformation journey. This easy and lightweight framework can bring immense prosperity to an organization if used in the right way. All they have to do is to accept and practice scrum for projects and organizational success.