Neurodivergent Employees, Scrum, and Defining What the Work Should Look Like When It is Done

Effective leadership is all about clear, detailed, and explicit communication. Unclear expectations? Guaranteed trouble. Angela Cox, PhD hits the mark about this all in her post about unspoken and unclear expectations as they relate to your neurodivergent employees!

Academic, creative, and knowledge work today is a hurlyburly mess of information coming in across all channels. The only thing worse than that is when detail-oriented work assignments are given out in a casual, verbal way. Neurodivergent team members sometimes process information differently, and lack of clarity can be a major setback. I know as an academic with ADHD and dyslexia that my ideas can start moving pretty fast. I might make giant leaps, connecting disparate ideas that could create useful educational tech apps, or I might get too far afield.

What can bring my hyperfocused and overclocked brain back to the task at hand? A few tools that can tether me and others to the Earth: project briefs, proposals, scope documents, examples of something you’d like me to reverse engineer, or better yet, Scrum boards. But I’m getting a head of myself. ??

Is your communication clear, thorough, and kind? This is the critical question for leaders. It’s about ensuring your message is received the way your audience needs. You must understand the diverse ways people process and respond to information.

“Expectations are the building blocks of resentment,” Cox says. This couldn’t be more true in professional settings. When you don’t articulate expectations clearly, misunderstandings happen. This breeds resentment on both sides. Neurodivergent employees, in particular, might need explicit guidelines and support.

Don’t expect people to read your mind. Everyone will be disappointed. Compassionate leadership also known as servant leadership, leaves nothing to chance. “Clear is kind,” as Cox reminds us. I’d add that clear communication is the path to getting products and services shipped. And let’s not forget, clear is also what you want when your employees and executives take their checks to the bank. After all, nobody likes a check that bounces.

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How Scrum Can Help

The Scrum framework, developed by Jeff Sutherland , makes these expectations explicit and transparent. It offers a structured yet flexible approach to and expectations. Its focus on iterative progress, regular feedback, and clear deliverables is perfect for neurodivergent employees. This structured approach can help us leverage our unique strengths effectively.

In Scrum, the Product Backlog holds all tasks and requirements, prioritized and clearly defined. During Sprint Planning, the team picks items from the backlog to tackle in the upcoming Sprint. Everyone knows what needs to be done. Daily Stand-ups are for quick updates, keeping everyone on the same page.

?At the end of each Sprint, the Sprint Review lets the team showcase completed work. This ensures everyone agrees on what “done” looks like. The Sprint Retrospective is the time to reflect and improve, driving continuous progress. In my ScrumMaster training with Peter Saddington , these concepts were emphasized as crucial. He likely has a training coming up soon if you’re interested.

While neurodivergent employees like me might feel the pain from a lack of clarity more acutely than others, defining expectations benefits all employees, managers, and clients by reducing ambiguity and fostering a more productive environment.

These Scrum ceremonies and artifacts create a clear, predictable workflow. This structure is gold for neurodivergent employees who thrive on clarity. By defining what “done” looks like, you create transparency and set clear expectations.

If you want to read more about Scrum here's an article about how I used the framework to analyze the 1988 film They Live.