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Now that things are more visible, what do you do with this new transparency?
Just because things are seen doesn’t mean they are understood. Evaluation seems straightforward, but practical evaluation is still a struggle for many teams.
Let’s walk through Scrum’s roles in helping you effectively evaluate.
How Scrum Helps You Evaluate Effectively
The compounding impact of evaluation.
We often think of evaluation as something we do at the beginning or the end, but it’s more of a continual process.
If you drive to the store, what part of the drive are you evaluating? Is it the beginning, middle or end? It’s the whole time. You are continually observing and assessing the speed and position of other cars, what color the light is, and whether you like the current song on the radio…
All those small evaluations come together to form a responsive and nuanced understanding of your surroundings. For many of us, work is at least as dynamic and complex as driving. Scrum provides a framework that invites the same kind of continual evaluation.
Scrum disarms evaluation by making it so regular
This gives the whole team a much more real-time understanding of what’s happening. This shared and distributed understanding is one of the Scrum team’s superpowers.
The sum of the daily evaluation enables contextualized knowledge that wouldn’t be possible if batched together at a later time. Leading projects or developing products without continuous evaluation is literally like driving with your eyes closed.
Now consider the impact when evaluation cascades across an organization with multiple teams continually evaluating and adjusting. You have the makings of a learning and agile organization.
Just because things are seen doesn’t mean they are understood.
Maybe you’re thinking, “I see how important evaluation is, but it’s not that easy, in fact it can be really difficult.” Let’s take a closer look at how Scrum can help.
How Scrum enables regular evaluation.
Evaluation can be challenging, especially when a team hasn’t developed the habit together. Here are four ways Scrum can help in this area.
- Bringing shared visibility.
- Providing structure without over-scripting it.
- Strengthening the team’s evaluation muscles.
- Creating moments for evaluation
Shared visibility leads to effective evaluation.
If you and I aren’t looking at the same thing, our evaluation will likely be fraught with misunderstandings. As Scrum increases an organization’s transparency making the work more visible, team members begin to see the same things.
Leading projects or developing products without continuous evaluation is literally like driving with your eyes closed.
The increased awareness allows the conversations to move more fluidly, and the shared ownership invites everyone to engage. The subject of evaluation is known to everyone and matters to everyone.
The question shifts from “what should you do about this?” to “what should we do about this?”
Scrum provides structure without over-scripting it.
Some may disagree with whether or not Scrum over-scripts evaluation. I say it doesn't because while Scrum provides a script, you’re free to change it.
Let’s take the daily standup as an example. Evaluation has a simple script.
- What did I complete yesterday?
- What will I commit to completing today?
- Where am I stuck?
Having a script is exceptionally helpful for a team learning the habit. But if, during the retrospective, the team decides to change one of the questions, they are free to do so. Most of the structure Scrum provides is flexible rather than rigid.
Scrum strengthens the team’s evaluation muscles.
What happens the next day if you go to the gym to work out for the first time in a few months or years? You feel it. Muscles you didn’t know you had are sore. Getting out of bed is up for debate, so going back to the gym is out of the question.
But what happens when you push through? How do you feel when you’ve been active and exercising daily for a few weeks? You feel strong, recover quicker, and don’t fear the pain that brings the gain.
Evaluation is never urgent, but it is always essential.
When a team is practicing Scrum, they evaluate every day, usually multiple times a day. At first, this can feel a little overwhelming and teams can resist. But if they push through they begin to strengthen their evaluation muscles.
For many people, evaluation can feel scary because it can be proximate to conflict. But Scrum disarms evaluation by making it so regular. The team's emotional strength and psychological safety increase by practicing evaluation in small and larger batches.
Engaging in evaluation for healthy Scrum teams becomes like a marathoner going out for a light jog.
Scrum creates moments for evaluation.
Allow me to continue the exercise comparison a little longer…
When is the most popular day to work out?
Tomorrow.
It’s always easier to put off running or starting a diet to our well-intentioned future selves. The same is true for evaluation. We think we’ll get to it when we have time, when we’re done.
Evaluation is never urgent, but it is always essential.
Scrum combats this resistance to evaluating by scheduling it for us. The Scrum events make space for the team to assess. It creates moments or even rituals for the team to evaluate without even realizing they're doing it anymore.
Related Guides
The importance of Rhythm in Evaluation.
Once evaluation becomes a habit, most friction is removed and propels the team forward.
Let’s take a deeper look at how each Scrum event helps to create a cadence of evaluation by looking at the questions they invite the team to answer.
Sprint Planning
- What is the purpose of the sprint?
- How will we get the work done?
Backlog Refinement
- What value will this feature provide?
- How much work will it take?
- What resources or information is needed?
Daily Standup
- How are we doing?
- What progress are we making?
- What issues are we facing?
Sprint Review
- Is this useful to the end-user?
- Does this meet the business needs?
Retrospective
- How are we doing as a team?
- Where are we doing well?
- What do we need to be better?
Suddenly evaluation is as habitual as getting coffee in the morning.
And that is the power of Scrum’s rhythm of evaluation. It becomes a habit. Evaluation becomes an automated part of the team’s behavior.
Did you know Scrum applies to more than just developing code?
When you understand the essentials of Scrum and the nuance of how to apply it, you can use it to level up aspects of everyday life.
Three actions you can take to cultivate evaluation on your team.
The culture of evaluation on your team won’t change overnight, but taking these three steps, means you won’t wait too long.
- Make evaluation visible.
- Press through the soreness.
- Stay in rhythm.
Make evaluation visible.
When people are doing something new or different, it’s natural to feel unsure if they’re doing it right. That feeling can cause them to hesitate or stop altogether.
Call it out when your team begins practicing evaluation in a new way. It can be as simple as saying something like, “this is really good we’re evaluating _______, this is going to help us continue to grow and get better?”
Naming and affirming new behaviors and gives people the confidence to continue until it becomes a habit.
Press through the soreness.
Practicing something new takes more energy than doing what you’ve always done. Forecast to the team that these new evaluation habits might initially take more time and energy, but they will make us stronger.
Providing a short-term goal or finish line often helps people push through the initial discomfort. You could propose to the team that they commit to these new behaviors for the next 40 days, and at that time, you can evaluate how it’s working.
By the time you get to 40 days, habits will be built, and the team will be able to see the fruit of greater agility.
Stay in rhythm.
When you first begin, you’ll probably need to be a little more rigid to build consistency initially. Keep your commitments to evaluation moments and keep the day, time and location the same.
This consistency will allow the team to feel the cadence of evaluation and get in sync with each other. You’ll find them more prepared to evaluate because they know what to expect.
Related Guides
When a team cultivates the ability to see what's happening and the discipline to evaluate, all that's left it the permission to adapt and change.
Action Plan
Scrum is a framework for organizing a team around the work of solving problems. Scrum makes the work more visible, so we can better evaluate and adapt.
These three pillars of Scrum are essential to an effective team.
- Transparency
- Inspection
- Adaptation
Continue to explore these pillars of Scrum or check out everyday scrum if your want a deeper dive into how to practice Scrum in your everyday life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Scrum design
What are the three pillars of Scrum?
Scrum is founded on three essential pillars, and each leads the team to ask a critical question.
- Transparency. How does this make things more visible?
- Inspection. Where does this create space to evaluate?
- Adaptation. When does this encourage growth?
Learn how to apply the three pillars of Scrum and then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
What are the values of Scrum?
There are five values critical to the practice of Scrum: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect.
- Commit to achieving the goals of the Scrum Team.
- Courage to do the right thing and work on challenging problems.
- Focus on the Sprint's work and the Scrum Team's goals.
- Open about all the work and the challenges with performing the work.
- Respect each other to be capable, independent people
Learn how to align Scrum values with your organization and then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
What is the sprint goal in scrum?
The sprint goal encapsulates the product owner’s vision into a concrete statement for the development team to measure the sprint against. The sprint goal provides a theme for the sprint’s work helping the team see how all the parts come together.
Learn more about the role of the sprint goal in scrum and explore the essential Scrum glossary.
Scrum elements
What is the definition of done?
The definition of done is a list of what must be true to consider a PBI done. The whole team creates and agrees to what is in the definition of done and is updated as needed for the team to function effectively.
Learn to use the definition of done and explore acceptance criteria vs definition of done.
What is the increment in scrum?
It is the next complete piece added to build the product. The increment is complete in the sense that it should be ready to release to the end-user even if the team chooses to wait.
Learn more about incremental and iterative development or explore the essential Scrum glossary.
What is Scrum?
What is the definition of scrum?
Scrum is founded on three essential pillars leading teams to ask the following questions:
- How does this make things more visible? (Transparency)
- Where does this create space to evaluate? (Inspection)
- When does this encourage growth? (Adaptation)
Further explore the definition of scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is Scrum hard to learn?
This is because Scrum’s simplicity makes learning easy, but Scrum truly changes how you work, and that adjustment can be difficult. It changes power dynamics and expectations within the team and between the team and the rest of the organization.
You can explore further is Scrum hard to learn, along with the pros and cons of Scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
When did Scrum start?
Scrum was initially used as a term related to project management in 1986 by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka in their paper “New New Product Development Game” In the Harvard Business Review. The first recorded Scrum project came a little later in 1993 from Jeff Sutherland.
You can learn more about Scrum’s backstory. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What do all the scrum words mean?
Learning Scrum for the first time can be overwhelming. There are a lot of new terms and concepts in Scrum. I’ve listed the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
Learning to apply Scrum
How to choose between Scrum and Kanban?
Important factors include your team size and the type of work you do. Kanban is very process-oriented, so you should consider how defined, static, or long your process is?
You can explore Scrum and other agile approaches. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How does scrum help an organization?
Scrum forces clarity and prioritization, which are critical to organizational effectiveness. It provides a competitive edge by allowing teams to adapt as the market or priorities change. Teams operate more effectively because Scrum combines empowerment of the team members with alignment to top priorities.
Learn more about scrum’s impact on organizational culture. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is scrum a methodology or a framework?
Scrum is more of a framework than a methodology, and it helps teams adhere to Agile principles and get stuff done. Scrum provides basic rules but doesn’t prescribe how to do the work. It provides principles, values, rules, and some core structure but still leaves a lot undefined.
Learn more about scrum as a framework. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What’s the difference between scrum and agile?
When people say “agile,” they usually refer to it as a mindset. Scrum is a framework for how to organize people and work in an agile way. If you’re practicing Scrum, you’re working in an Agile way.
Learn more about the relationship between scrum and agile. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How to use Scrum
Why use Scrum?
It forces clarity and prioritization, which provides the focus necessary for teams to be effective. Scrum embraces complexity and change by keeping many things simple and iteratively evaluating and adapting.
You can learn more about why to use Scrum and three challenges Scrum solves. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
When does Scrum not work well?
Scrum isn’t always the best option for teams. Scrum can fail when there is a substantial mismatch between organizational culture and the Scrum values. It also depends on the nature of the work you do. If you work if very linear, predictable and tightly defined, you may not experience many benefits Scrum provides.
Find out more about aligning your organizational values with Scrum or how Scrum might fit in your context. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How do I know when to use Scrum?
Scrum functions at its best when you have a dedicated team focused on developing a singular product. Its agility shines when there are time constraints combined with uncertainty.
Explore the pros and cons of Scrum along with expectations vs. realities with Scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
