The Three Pillars of Scrum (And Why You Should Understand Them)

Scrum is the most popular Agile framework you can use to address complex problems. It’s something to seriously consider in the world of dynamically changing environments and requirements, as it ensures the best use of your time and resources.

Have you ever thought about learning more about the pillars of scrum and how they work? The three pillars of scrum serve a hugely important role when it comes to agile scrum framework, which is why it’s so important to ensure that you’ve got the right strategies in place to optimize them accordingly. Luckily, I’m here today to help you understand a little more about the three pillars of scrum – and why understanding and implementing them is so important.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, every business and manager has their own management and leadership style. However, if you’ve been looking to become a scrum master specifically, you’ll need to ensure you understand the three pillars of scrum and empiricism first. Knowing how these work in practice can also help further your management style and skills.

To practice it effectively, it’s essential to learn Scrum values and principles, which are reflected in the three empirical pillars. All the roles, events, and artifacts depend on them. They’re the key to product development.

Scrum does not work merely based on that it has three roles, three artifacts, and five events; it works because it adheres to the underlying Agile principles of iterative, value-based incremental delivery which is achieved by gathering the customer feedback and accepting changes. Adhering to the Three Pillars of Empiricism is one of the main reasons why companies have chosen the Scrum Framework to adopt Agile Methodology in their industry.

What is Empiricism in Scrum?

Empiricism means working in a fact-based, experience-based, and evidence-based manner. Scrum implements an empirical process where progress is based on observations of reality, not fictitious plans. Scrum also places great emphasis on mind-set and cultural shift to achieve business and organizational Agility.

?There’s a direct feedback loop in most organizations and management styles that influences how teams cooperate with one another. This is generally known as empiricism and occurs when the business’s teams make direct changes to decisions based on the customers’ lived, real experiences with the brand rather than what the management teams typically expect the customer to experience.

This unique form of decision-making helps provide a more customer-focused form of management, which may make the business feel more inclusive and supportive of its customers accordingly.

?What are the Three Pillars of Scrum (Empiricism)?

?The process of Scrum is simple to understand, but when it comes to mastering the Scrum Framework, it may be difficult to manage. It requires transparency, inspection, and adaption to achieve the best possible outcome by using the Scrum Framework. These three values or virtues in Scrum are called the Three Pillars of Empiricism. Working in a fact-based, evidence-based, and experienced-based manner is called Empiricism. Scrum Framework does not believe in fictitious plans and works and progresses based on the observations of reality.

The three pillars of scrum are fundamentals on which the scrum framework relies. Most management teams believe that all three pillars of scrum must be integrated into the management style for the most effective results. ?The three pillars of empiricism are as follows:

Transparency

The first pillar of scrum is transparency. Through transparency, businesses and management teams should focus on enhancing access to information relating to the brand, which can help enhance trust and ensure everyone has the knowledge they need to do their job appropriately.

Transparency means that all the facts of the product development process are present as is in front of everyone involved in the operation. These individuals involved are the customers, all the members of the Developer, the Product Owner, Scrum Master, the Stakeholders, the CEO, and other individual contributors. All of the members of the organization are transparent with their day-to-day dealings with others as they trust each other and have faith in the other person's work. The members of the team have to follow transparency to have the courage to keep each other abreast of the good news and the bad news.

?Inspection

Inspection is a method for evaluating the Advancement Team's efforts. It encompasses the products and activities and processes, human factors, practices, and continual product improvement. Inspecting the work of each individual, the process and any component of product enhancement would significantly raise the prospects of valuable results.

Through inspection, scrum masters must focus on regularly monitoring and overseeing goals and activities, which helps ensure that any missed milestones or areas of poor performance can be identified and addressed easily.

Let us understand this with an example. The Developer transparently and openly shows the product at the end of the Sprint to the customers so that they can gain valuable feedback to improve their products. This gives the developers to understand where they have gone wrong and make sure that a similar mistake would not be performed while developing the product. Inspection should be taken in a positive aspect by every individual as it is an opportunity for the person to grow as a Scrum Professional and become the best version of themselves. And at the end, even if the customers change the requirements of the product during the inspection, the team adapts the product by treating it as an opportunity to collaborate with the customer and clarify the requirements. Hence, inspection becomes an integral part of the improvement of the product, processes, and also people.

Adaptation

The concept of adaptation in the perspective of Scrum project management refers to the process of continuously improving the product. It is described as the capacity to improvise or modify in response to inspection results. Agile Methodology has always encouraged adaptability. Even though the customer requests a change to the specifications, Scrum considers and incorporates the change in the subsequent Sprint.

Following the inspection pillar, scrum masters may need to demonstrate skills for adaptation to help the business cope with new changes. Scrum masters should be able to lead changes in the business to further the goals of the business or support customers in achieving a good standard of customer service and satisfaction. As such, adaptability is critical in response to any areas that might be lacking presently.

?What is the Role of the Three Pillars of Scrum in Practice?

The role of the three pillars of scrum in practice is to streamline business processes to enhance customer satisfaction overall. Furthermore, in practice, the three pillars of scrum can also help promote the overall efficiency of a business team and reduce the number of complaints received by the development team. In turn, this can also help improve worker morale accordingly while promoting overall job and customer satisfaction. It may also support the profitability of the business through superior customer service, reduced staff turnover rates, and heightened sales.

Are All Three Pillars of Scrum Genuinely Important?

Many businesses overlook the three pillars of scrum. However, if you are looking to work as a scrum master or implement agile management techniques in your organization, the three pillars of scrum are vitally important. Indeed, each of the three pillars of scrum helps support overall customer and staff satisfaction with the brand. As such, it is integral to implement these where possible to optimize your product management, enhance satisfaction, and improve financial results accordingly.

Of course, implementing just one pillar of scrum may still help your business management slightly. For example, enhancing brand transparency may increase faith in your business – however, the effects of focusing on just one or two pillars of scrum are very limited. With this thought in mind, for the best results, you’ll still want to focus on integrating all the pillars of scrum into your business – ideally all three – to see the optimal results accordingly.

Who is Responsible for Taking Care of the Three Pillars of Scrum?

The three pillars of scrum are everyone’s responsibility; however, the utmost responsibility for upholding and managing the pillars of scrum falls to the scrum master. The scrum master is responsible for managing and guiding a project’s team, giving them the final responsibility over implementing the pillars and ensuring that they are managed appropriately.

The scrum master needs to find the balance between each pillar to optimize the business’s perception accordingly. For example, it’s the scrum manager’s responsibility to prioritize different aspects of transparency to ensure that customers and business team members have access to genuinely helpful information rather than the wrong information that doesn’t help instill trust in the business.

Summary: Why Should You Use All Three Pillars of Scrum?

In summary, all three pillars of scrum – transparency, inspection, and adaptation – should be implemented into the business to promote the firm’s overall management and public perception. However, the pillars of scrum themselves must be addressed individually on a case-by-case basis to ensure that customers and scrum team receive the support and information they need.

For example, inspections should still keep the final business goals in mind, while transparency goals should focus on sharing information that’s most relevant and important to the recipient (rather than information that holds less meaning and value).

Final Thoughts

The three pillars of scrum are fundamental components of effective scrum practices. Fortunately, the three pillars of scrum are highly effective for supporting your overall management decisions and ensuring that your management style is reliable, effective, and genuinely uplifting for your teams. As such, it’s important to consider how you could implement these strategies in your leadership style; you might be amazed by the value it can bring.

Making good use of empiricism and scrum means leveraging learning immediately for the greater good of your customers, your company, and your position in the market.