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

by Jeff Sutherland

but when you ask people how happy they are, they actually project into the future.

autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Or

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

If you can’t trust the people you’re hiring to be on board with what you’re doing, you’re hiring the wrong people, and you’ve set up a system that has failure built in.

There are three task-status levels: To Do, Doing, and Done.

Everyone knew exactly what everyone else was working on all the time.

But because we were transparent with everything, we could get the product into the market faster than anyone in the world.

It turns out that to make customers happy, you want happy people on the other end of the phone.

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.

Even after getting the job offer, you have to prove that you can absorb the culture.

keeps people happy is by giving employees a chance to learn and grow.

Zappos wants people to grow at and within the company.

people want to grow; they want to get better at what they’re doing and find what else they can get better at.

It was the culture, she says. “It’s what makes me excited coming to work.”

I want people to love coming to work. It’s a change in mind-set.

The company wants people to work together in relationships across the organization.

Imagine a company that everyone thinks of as my company, where every day is a chance to get better, to do something better, to learn something new.

At Zappos if you don’t fit with the team, and the culture, you don’t fit in the company.

They want people who use joy as a driver.

We should aspire not just to make employees “happy,” but to do so by helping them achieve great things.

Happy employees show up at work, they bear down harder, and not only do they not leave a company, they attract others like them who share the same drive.

They took fewer sick days, had fewer doctor’s appointments, and were more likely to get promoted.3

They say to themselves, Hey, we’ve improved so much, we don’t need to improve any more.

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

not wanting to be seen as unfit themselves.

The Wise Fool is that child—the person who can see that the accepted truth is simply a consensual illusion, and that really the emperor has no clothes.

to analyze how people approach the world is by asking whether what they’re doing makes them happy today, and whether it will make them happier tomorrow.

the individual who is working at stuff that is fun today but has an eye toward a better future and who is convinced it will be fun forever.

The next layer is safety—not just physical and financial, but also the assurance of good health.

love and belonging—that

Above that is the need for self-esteem and respect from others.

at the pyramid’s very top is the need to achieve one’s full potential.

that Scrum focuses on: helping people achieve personal grow...

they’re able to deliver greatness.

True happiness is found in the process, not the result.

Plus, when you’re happy, you’re more creative,

Happiness is a future-looking metric.

Have a board that shows all the work that needs to be done, what is being worked on, and what is actually done. Everyone should see it, and everyone should update it every day.

serve a purpose greater than themselves.

is a vision rooted in reality—a vision with a real possibility of becoming something great.

The key, though, is what you decide to do first.

The questions you need to ask are: 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?

You want something that is completely Done—that you can show.

How do we deliver value to them faster than anyone else?”

the difficult part isn’t figuring out what you want to accomplish; it’s figuring out what you can accomplish.

Well, first you need someone who can figure out both what the vision is, and where the value lies.

I found myself agreeing that leadership has nothing to do with authority.

But I didn’t want a manager. I wanted someone the team would believe and trust when he prioritized the Backlog.

from a customer point of view.

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.