Scrum without the fluff— a super-simple description

So, you see this need in the market or within our own organization. Something that people would like to do but can't, or something that you can make easier for people. You have a great solution - a product.

Work in small steps to make sure you're getting it right

Let's start by making a list of all the things that are needed for this product that you know of now. Because you're just getting started, you'll learn more as you do the work.

Rather than doing all the things on the list in one go, you'll do it in short steps instead. At the end of each step, you will go back to the people that care about the product to see if you understood their needs, to see if they're happy with it and to gather new, valuable ideas. Do whatever you can to use each step to put a working product in the hands of people, as this will give you the most realistic feedback. Plus, your product can already start being valuable to the people you're building it for.

Do whatever you can to use each step to put a working product in the hands of people, as this will give you the most realistic feedback.

By building your product in short steps, you avoid spending a lot of time and money on something that people don't like or don't actually help them. It also allows you to gather better ideas than the ones you originally had.

You'll need a team of clever professionals

Building a high-quality product is very hard. It requires creativity, intelligence, and expertise. In order to make the steps as short as possible, you want to create a team of professionals that has all that is required to complete the work each step. The more the team has to depend on people outside the team, the slower they will become.

Let's assume that the professionals know what they are doing. Let them decide how to make the most out of each step and give them the freedom and focus to do so.

You'll need one person to make decisions about the product

You want to help a lot of different people and groups with your product. Naturally, they will have different needs, interests, and ideas. To keep you focused on solving the right problem, we'll pick one person to decide what will be part of the product and what will not. This person will have the difficult task of working with everyone interested in your product and determine with them what the team will work on and in what order. Being able to say 'No' is one of the most important skills this person needs.

You'll need one person to make sure that this all happens

This all sounds incredibly sensible. But for most organizations, it is not. So you'll have to pick one person (preferably per team) to make sure that the above happens. Exactly because most organizations are not used to this way of working, this will be a challenging task - even on the level of a single team. It will require collaboration with others to help the organization remove the inevitable roadblocks that distract teams or slow them down.

This all sounds incredibly sensible. But for most organizations, it is not.

This is Scrum. And it's really sensible.

Want to start or continue your own journey into Scrum? Join one of our upcoming Professional Scrum Master-courses or Scrum Master Advanced-courses. We also provide custom workshops or in-house training.