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

by Jeff Sutherland

Work doesn’t have to suck. It can flow; it can be an expression of joy, an alignment toward a higher purpose. We can be better. We can be great! We just have to practice.

Transcendent: They have a sense of purpose beyond the ordinary. This self-realized goal allows them to move beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary. In a very real way the

very decision to not be average, but to be great, changes the way they view themselves, and what they’re capable of. Autonomous: The teams are self-organizing and self-managing, they have the power to make their own decisions about how they do their jobs, and are empowered to make those decisions stick. Cross-Functional: The teams have all the skills needed to complete the project. Planning, design, production, sales, distribution. And those skills feed and reinforce each other. As one team member that designed a revolutionary new camera for Canon described it: “When all the team members are located in one large room, someone’s information becomes yours, without even trying. You then start thinking in terms of what’s best or second best for the group at large and not only where you stand.”

facilitator and organizer—a helper or booster rather

than a typical manager or leader. J.J.’s job was to help the team do the best work they could. It wasn’t to tell them what to do—rather, it was to provide them with what they needed.

questions: What did you do since the last time we talked? What are you going to do before we talk again? And what is getting in your way?

“What team are you on?” If he or she responds by mentioning the product they’re working on (say automation or integration) rather than their specialty (such as network engineering), she nods approvingly.

The classic formulation is seven people, plus or minus two, though

Brooks’s Law says “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”

We all perceive ourselves as responding to a situation, while we see others as motivated by their character.

What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the Sprint? What will you do today to help the team finish the Sprint? What obstacles are getting in the team’s way?

Passivity is not only lazy, it actively hurts the rest of the team’s performance. Once spotted, it needs to be eliminated immediately.

Muri, waste through unreasonableness; Mura, waste through inconsistency; and Muda, waste through outcomes.

Number of Simultaneous Projects Percent of Time Available per Project Loss to Context Switching 1 100% 0% 2 40% 20% 3 20% 40% 4 10% 60% 5 5% 75%

The “Loss to Context Switching” column is pure waste. That’s right: if you have five projects, a full 75 percent of your work goes nowhere—three-quarters of your day is flushed down the toilet. It’s why you couldn’t write the rows and columns at the same speed. It’s a result of the physical limitations of your brain.

You concentrate fully on one thing at a time. You talk on the cell phone, and even though all you’re discussing is picking up milk, you literally can’t see the car in front of you. Your brain can’t process those two things at the same time. There has been some recent research using fMRIs to map the brain as it’s actually thinking. The data show that it’s

possible to think about two things at once only with one process running in each lobe of your brain. But even then, the scans indicate that the thinking isn’t happening simultaneously but, rather, the brain is switching from one task to another in serial fashion. Basically, there’s a control function, so you can’t argue with yourself too vigorously.6

that carefully built mental architecture collapses.

Multitasking Makes You Stupid. Doing more than one thing at a time makes you slower and worse at both tasks. Don’t do it. If you think this doesn’t apply to you, you’re wrong—it does. Half-Done Is Not Done. A half-built car simply ties up resources that could be

used to create value or save money. Anything that’s “in process” costs money and energy without delivering anything. Do It Right the First Time. When you make a mistake, fix it right away. Stop everything else and address it. Fixing it later can take you more than twenty times longer than if you fix it now. Working Too Hard Only Makes More Work. Working long hours doesn’t get more done; it gets less done. Working too much results in fatigue, which leads to errors, which leads to having to fix the thing you just finished. Rather than work late or on the weekends, work weekdays only at a sustainable pace. And take a vacation. Don’t Be Unreasonable. Goals that are challenging are motivators; goals that are impossible are just depressing. No Heroics. If you need a hero to get things done, you have a problem. Heroic effort should be viewed as a failure of planning. Enough with the Stupid Policies. Any policy that seems ridiculous likely is. Stupid forms, stupid meetings, stupid approvals, stupid standards are just that—stupid. If your office seems like a Dilbert cartoon, fix it. No Assholes. Don’t be one, and don’t allow the behavior. Anyone who causes emotional chaos, inspires fear or dread, or demeans or diminishes people needs to be stopped cold. Strive for Flow. Choose the smoothest, most trouble-free way to get things done. Scrum is about enabling the most flow possible.

Fibonacci Sequence: All Around Us