Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff Sutherland

“continuous improvement.”

kaizen, or “improvement.” What is the little improvement that can be done right away that will make things better?

“Happiness Metric.” It’s a simple but very effective way of getting at what the kaizen should be, but also which kaizen will make people the happiest. And I’ve used it with pretty remarkable results.

On a scale from 1 to 5, how do you feel about your role in the company? 2. On the same scale, how do you feel about the company as a whole?

Why do you feel that way? 4. What one thing would make you happier in the next Sprint?

What are the things that actually make people happy? They’re the same things that make great teams: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Or to say it more expansively, it’s the ability to control your own destiny, it’s the feeling that you’re getting better at something, and it’s knowing that you’re serving something bigger than yourself.

They actually know what people are doing, who is helping, who is hurting, who makes the team great, and who makes it painful.

everything is visible. In my companies, every salary, every financial, every expenditure is available to everyone.

Their research shows that the more connected people are to other people at work, the happier they are—and, apparently, the more productive and innovative as well.

The company also offers free classes taught by other employees—Finance

the more senior the new hire, the more ingrained their thinking, and, therefore, the harder they have to work to shed old ways of doing things.

they called them “thriving.” They found that these people performed 16 percent better than their peers, had 125 percent less burnout, were 32 percent more committed, and 46 percent more satisfied with their jobs. They took fewer sick days, had fewer doctor’s appointments, and were more likely to get promoted.3

Managers should also have zero tolerance for incivility and never allow an employee to poison corporate culture through abuse or disrespect. And, finally, they should give quick and direct feedback.

Their pride and complacency were their downfall. They were living in the happy bubble.

The “Wise Fool” is the person who asks uncomfortable questions or raises uncomfortable truths.

It’s not enough just to be happy. Happiness needs to be harnessed to produce results. All the elements of Scrum come together to help a person do just that. The real trick? Priorities.

It’s the Journey, Not the Destination.

If you concentrate only on what you can build, you can end up making something that nobody actually wants, even if you’re passionate about it. If you concentrate only on what you can sell, you can promise things you can’t build. If you only build what you can sell but aren’t passionate about, you end up working hard to build mediocrity. But in the center, that sweet spot, is a vision rooted in reality—a vision with a real possibility of becoming something great.

Backlog is that it should have everything that could possibly be included in the product. You’re never going to actually build it all, but you want a list of everything that could be included in that product vision.

what are the items that have the biggest business impact, that are most important to the customer, that can make the most money, and are the easiest to do?

80 percent of the value is in 20 percent of the features.

The trick of Scrum is figuring out how you build that 20 percent first.

An individual’s responsibility for leadership is not dependent on authority.… the deep-rooted assumption that authority should equal responsibility is the root of much organizational evil. I believe misunderstanding around this issue is rampant, problematic, and runs so deep in our consciousness that we don’t even realize

leadership has nothing to do with authority. Rather, it has to do with—among other things—knowledge and being a servant-leader.

When you’re picking a Product Owner, get someone who can put themselves in the mind of whoever is getting value from what you’re doing.

the Product Owner needs to be knowledgeable about the domain.

the Product Owner has to be empowered to make decisions.

the Product Owner has to be available to the team, to explain what needs to be done and why.

reasons I rarely recommend that CEOs or other senior executives be Product Owners. They just don’t have the time the team needs.

the Product Owner needs to be accountable for value.

the OODA loop. That’s short for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. And while it may sound funny on the tongue,

Getting inside someone’s loop reduces them to confusion and doubt.

“He who can handle the quickest rate of change survives.”

“Observe” is fairly obvious—it’s clearly seeing the situation as it unfolds.

“Orient” is not just about where you are; it’s also about what outcomes you’re capable of seeing—the menu of alternatives you create for yourself.

Orientation reflects not only how you see the world and your place in it, but what world you’re capable of seeing.

What Scrum does, by delivering a working increment, is give the Product Owner the ability to see how much value that increment creates, how people react to it. Then, based on that information, she can change what the team will do in the next Sprint. This sets up a constant feedback cycle that accelerates innovation

“He who will defend everything defends nothing.”

How effective does it have to be? Well, it should actually work, though to a person who has been working on it, it may seem kind of embarrassing. You need to get that product out to the public as early as is feasible!

The paradox of those rules, though, is that they eliminate boundaries, they create freedom—and

“When a company has optimized itself around innovation, they usually change in a fundamental way by eliminating internal structures and hierarchies, any internal structure,”

With any company, first you have to get employees to set themselves free, and then you have to get them to accept the responsibility that comes with that.

humans want to be great. People want to do something purposeful—to make the world, even if just in a small way, a better place. The key is getting rid of what stands in their way, removing the impediments to their becoming who they’re capable of becoming.

Scrum Accelerates All Human Endeavors. The type of project or problem doesn’t matter—Scrum can be used in any endeavor to improve performance and results.

Product Backlog is the single, definitive view of “everything that could be done by the team ever, in order of priority.”

Each day, at the same time, for no more than fifteen minutes, the team and the Scrum Master meet and answer three questions: • What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the Sprint? • What will you do today to help the team finish the Sprint? • Is there any obstacle blocking you or the team from achieving the Sprint Goal?

they sit down and think about what went right, what could have gone better, and what can be made better in the next Sprint.