We need to fix #Scrum. It doesn't help PMs enough. I'm a PSPO III. I've been working in Scrum for 8+ years. What hurts me the most is that Scrum ignores PM and treats it as a black box. Here are my 7 ideas on how to fix Scrum: 🧵 #productmanagement #prodmgmt #Agile
Before we dive in, some may say, "Scrum is purposely incomplete." To me, it's like focusing on the engine and ignoring that it is part of the car. There are also other issues. So here they are:
1. Add Product Vision You can't lead people without vision. Vision statements are aspirational and communicate concisely where the product hopes to go and what it hopes to achieve in the long term. Product Vision gives the team purpose.
2. Add Product Strategy You need a product strategy aligned with the business strategy. Product strategy defines: - customer segments and their needs\jobs - value proposition - differentiators - tradeoffs - competitors - market - how it will create value for the business
Product Strategy helps you decide what to do next (outcomes) and in which order. It also provides empowered teams with the strategic context so that they can make better decisions.
3. Add Product Discovery According to @cagan, "at least half of our ideas are just not going to work" (Inspired). Thus, learning only by delivering results in colossal waste and rework.
We need two streams running in parallel: - Product Discovery answers when the question "what to build." It results in a validated Product Backlog. - Product Delivery aims to build it See "Dual-Track Development" by @jeffpatton https://www.jpattonassociates....
4. Add Release, Measure, and Learn loop Sprint Review is not enough. You can't reliably measure the outcomes before people start using the product "for real." Hence, we must release, measure the results, and learn from those measurements.
5. Explicitly mention experiments in the Product Backlog Experiments are a special type of work that doesn't result in Increments of value. Their goal is to validate the riskiest hypotheses and, consequently, reduce the risks.
6. Information & evidence when Scrum is effective 12 years after the first version of the SG was published, we could be talking about randomized control trials, scientific papers, etc. Instead, we keep talking and exchanging opinions, and we struggle with absurds like SAFe.
7. Remove immutability The SG should encourage experimentation and going beyond the framework to pursue value creation. The Scrum Master should be focused on increasing the team's effectiveness, not "(…) establishing Scrum as defined in the SG You can't focus on both.
- - - Like this thread? See my full article: https://medium.com/design-boot... I might be wrong. I care about starting the discussion and getting your feedback. Do you agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?
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@PawelHuryn Isn’t ‘scrum’ focused on how to run agile teams? I don’t think it’s purpose was ever to get into product management?
@PatThePM Product Goal, Product Backlog, Product Owner... It pretends to be used by Agile teams working on products. If so, Product Vision, Strategy, and Discovery are equally important. Another interpretation is that S. may be used to produce the output and implement cust. requirements.
@PawelHuryn Scrum Alliance has identified Coaching as a key skill to complement adoption of Scrum Values. What stops Scrum practitioners to adopt product development & design thinking as well?
@PF_Echoes It's empirically proven that most teams fail to implement them. In general, most Scrum implementations fail (calling them "not Scrum" doesn't change much). If we continue doing what we are doing, we can't expect different results.
@PawelHuryn No, NO! Dual track is not the fix. It is the problem. Scrum says nothing about that, but an Agile principle does: Business people and developers work TOGETHER. Check feature factories from @johncutlefish https://cutle.fish/blog/12-sig...
@agility_wars @johncutlefish In my opinion, Agile Manifesto is not a good reference. It was about customer-vendor relationship with customer defining and changing the requirements "even late in the process" (read as: project). "Working software is a primary measure of progress." This is a feature factory ;)
@PawelHuryn Great gap analysis where #Scrum falls short of helping to resolve Product problems. But your idea of a "fix" is to bloat it further? The #ScrumGuide empirically derived how to develop+deliver #Product. Putting an expansive framework over more of the PM craft renders it irrelevant
@PawelHuryn 100% death to scrum. It doesn’t serve the teams or the customer. There are way better ways to deliver.
@PawelHuryn Excellent thread.👍 I always try to create awareness & address these gaps during agile adoption. The process alone is not helpful, u need a stronger product mgmt and DevOps culture than only Agile can be truly fully beneficial.
@PawelHuryn Scrum requires few things not only product management. I believe that people naive thinks that responsibilities from SG dont require anything else. As devs requires technical skills, po requires pm skills and SM requires many team connected competences. It isnt easy entrance job!
@PawelHuryn All your suggestions are great, I can‘t see why they need to be fixed in the Scrum framework, POs are not limited to it, no? If one limits the role to Scrum-written, this is a choice.
@PawelHuryn We don’t need to change Scrum. You answered yourself with great parallel discovery/refinement practices. Scrum’s purpose is to build what needs to be built.
@PawelHuryn As a PM (Leader) it’s your job to infuse these things into the process, get the buy in and build great things!
@PawelHuryn I suspect what we have here is an engineering team trying to practice scrum in an otherwise waterfall org. Changing scrum won’t fix the parts of the org that don’t practice it.
@PawelHuryn @memdotai mem it