What Comes First … Agile Processes Or The Agile Mindset?

One of the Scrum Masters I coach, Rita, asked me about this recently and this was my advice.

Most of her team were new to Scrum, except for one guy, Alan, who had been doing Agile for a while and he wasn’t happy with the coaching approach.???

Alan was frustrated because all they were doing was following Scrum processes … there was so much more to learn through the Agile mindset.

During our next coaching session Rita asked my advice on this.

She empathised with Alan and so was unsure how to respond.

The order in which you introduce new Agile processes and mindset work is completely driven by the unique circumstances of the Scrum Team: the company’s culture, the team’s maturity, the product you are trying to deliver etc, but nine times out of ten I would suggest the following.

If Scrum is the right framework best suited to the team’s needs then teach the Scrum ways of working first, to the point that these become second nature.?This might take two or three months.

When you think the team is ready, start to introduce some mindset changes, but do this so that the change directly addresses an issue or behaviour the team is exhibiting and you think could be improved.

For instance, consider this scenario.

One of your team unexpectedly has had to take some leave because of illness.

She is one of your senior developers and the only one on the team who knows how to code a couple of features prioritised by the Product Owner for this Sprint.

As a result the team was unable to achieve their Sprint Goal and there was nothing the rest of the team could do about this.

This would be an excellent time to introduce the team to collective ownership, e.g. the need for knowledge sharing.

They will understand the concept of collective ownership far better because it was the solution to an unfortunate event that caused the team to let down their Product Owner.

They will see the need far more deeply to remove single points of failure through this mindset shift to always be thinking about what you can learn from your team and what you can teach and share with them as well.

If you are experiencing similar challenges and would like to talk these through with me, then drop me a DM and let’s have a chat.