What is Scrum?

Start with the end in mind

You probably know Stephen Covey's book.

So, let me cut to the chase.

My main point in this article: Scrum is many things. Keep trying to discover the heart of Scrum, the essence. And be prepared every day to be surprised.

I think that will serve you well.

Intro

I talk about Scrum fairly often.

But let's consider first principles.

If you ask me, we start with love, in some sense of the word. Then God. Then family and friends.

Then there is successful business in the real world with these principles. And I think the next key idea is Heraclitus': "The only constant is change." You can argue that Socrates comes earlier, for us who are knowledge workers: "I am the smartest man in the world; I know that I know nothing." It emphasizes the primacy of Learning.

I think then we can start to talk about what is all-too-vaguely called Business Agility. (Usually, IMO, the phrase is not well defined.)

And only then do we talk about tools. (I think that's a fair short name for them, because the key thing is that the tool works to help us achieve our higher goals.) In this context, agile is a tool. And, even more specifically, Scrum is a tool.

A Preamble to the Definition

The older I get, the less I know. (Similar to Socrates. Less eloquent.)

But I mean now about what Scrum is.

Or, to say the same thing a different way: I see that Scrum -- even though it is a mere tool -- is a glorious thing with many facets. (I am thinking of diamonds and also flowers.)

James Coplien gave a great talk on May 2nd at the Berlin Business Agility meetup, titled, I think: "Scrum. You keep using that word. Do you really know what it means?" I think his title is also saying what I am trying to get at here. Certainly, I agree there is much about Scrum that has been misunderstood.

The short answer

The short answer is I have no short answer to: what is Scrum?

Or, I have many definitions, and I feel I keep discovering more definitions. More angles, more insights, more views of the heart, more about what is most essential.

The longer answer

Here are some answers:

• Scrum is a Game. (Hence, the Scrum Guide is called the Rules to the Game.)
• My friend Jim York likes to say Scrum is a diagnostic tool. Much truth in that.
• Scrum is a small collection of patterns, from the much larger set that the original discoverers of Scrum used, in those first teams. (And there were many discoverers, even unknown ones, who somehow whispered in their ears.)
• Scrum is a dream forgotten, that they are trying to remember.
• Scrum was heavily influenced by Lean (or the Toyota Production System or similar).
• Just as Taiichi Ohno said that he got it all from Henry Ford's book, so we can say that all of Scrum originates from Ohno-san. There is truth in that, but it is also misleading.
• Scrum is heavily influenced by Systems Thinking and the ideas around Complex Adaptive Systems.
• Scrum was inspired by Takeuchi and Nonaka's article "The New New Product Development Game", and then, caught in the music, they continued on.
• Scrum was notably influenced by The Theory of Constraints (Goldratt).
• Scrum is a reaction to the waterfall.
• Scrum is much bigger than the things in the Scrum Guide. To really understand Scrum, one must read all the books and articles by Schwaber and Sutherland, and then try to apply some of that, with common-sense, to your specific situation.
• Scrum was indeed based partly on Ogunnaike's ideas about Empirical Process Control. Ken Schwaber visited him, and was deeply influenced. And the agile and scrum communities have benefited: Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation.
• While the deeper wisdom of Ogunnaike's ideas about process control are not fully appreciated in the Scrum community, still the relentless repetition of the mere 3 words (Transparency, Inspection, Adaptation) has perhaps obscured as much as elucidated what is really happening in the heart of Scrum.
• Scrum is the magic of 7 people coming together as one being, a Team, to do some wonderful work. (It is Scrum when they do that; the rules of Scrum themselves cannot guarantee that.)
• Scrum is the growing set of Patterns defined at ScrumPLOP.org. Not just the ones they have now, but the new ones to be added.
• Scrum is really the magic that usually happens when sincere and clever people try to use a bunch of those patterns, the synergy or collaboration or fun that the Team feels, and the wonderful Product that comes out for the Customers.
• Scrum might be said to be some "starter set of patterns" (as suggested by the Scrum Guide), but the bigger truth is that it is a bare framework. You neglect the main patterns (more than the starter set) at your peril (so a parent might say). But in the end, each is only a pattern. A suggestion. The biggest rule: You have your one life now. No one understands your situation fully, not even you yourself. See your situation as best you can. Think for yourself. Trust fully in no one else. You, like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, must act now. May you act within the wisdom of God. (Ken Schwaber: "Use common sense, and remember that common sense is not very common.")
• A bunch of people, pretty smart, iconoclastic people, got together, and tried a bunch of things with a bunch of teams. Experiments. They argued about what was most essential to success (and, comparatively, they got a lot of success). Sutherland and Schwaber said: "We've got something here, let's share it." So, to keep it simple, they wrote down, as best they could, some of the stuff they were doing. And, because of Takeuchi and Nonaka's paper, called it Scrum.
• Many related ideas have been expressed by many people, from millennia before, down to fashionable ideas in the 1980's and 1990's, to ideas that were "in the ether" since then. Many many of these ideas influenced Scrum (consciously or unconsciously). Or can be used now to explain why Scrum works. (So: It is foolish to say Scrum has only one source.)
• It is somewhat useful to say: "Scrum can be seen as a simple implementation of Lean for new product development."
• "The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao." (Per one translation of Lao-Tzu's great puzzle.)
• "As practical people of business, why bother so much about what Scrum is? Use what you can use, get that benefit, and move on!" (Much recommends this short expression. But have we enjoyed the orange fully in just the first squeeze? Perhaps we throw away what is most useful in our childish impatience.)
• Scrum becomes what the Team and the organization can make of it. Use it well.

Conclusion

Come to accept the ambiguity about what Scrum is, what it really is.

Search. Keep searching, keep discovering. This will teach you more. More that you can turn to practical advantage for your Team.

One way: Open your eyes to what is happening in your Team now. ("In your Team" is broadly, not narrowly, defined.) This will teach you about Scrum. This will help you understand your Team better, and help you guide them in their journey to becoming better.