Creative Scrum: Selling the Idea

Outlining the benefits

On one call, our production team quickly cranked out a list of benefits. It looked like this:

• Collective ownership
• Collaboration
• Steward creative’s work (not wasted)
• Helps us to do higher-priority work
• Manages our capacity
• Consistent flow of work (people won’t have to sit around waiting)
• Work won’t sit at 80% complete forever, it will get done
• Improved completion rate for projects
• More flexible when there are changes (staffing, vacation, priorities, coronavirus...)
• Transparency helps us be healthier
• Promotes feedback

It wasn't organized or crisply messaged, but we had a list, and that's a good place to start. This list was our success bucket for creative scrum, containing all the aspects of how it would make things better.

If you haven't already, take a few minutes and write out your list of benefits that you believe will result from implementing creative scrum.

How we communicated the benefits changed based on who we we're talking to. The content didn't change, but how it was packaged did. Two key factors guided how we communicated the benefits. 

1. Frame the benefits from the perspective of your audience.
2. Give the details *they* want

It's so natural to explain things from our own perspective and share the details we see as important. Your communication will be much more effective when you approach it from your audience's perspective. 

The goal of these before and after meetings is a combination of understanding, empathy and alignment.

I had a main slide deck including most of the critical information, like benefits, overarching concepts and details. I never shared that deck. I made various versions of it depending on who I was communicating with. 

For each, I would consider, "What are the questions they want answered? What is most important to them?"

This discipline of contextualization not only improved my communication but also improved my design. As I would look from another perspective, I would see a potential opportunity or pain point that had been hiding in the background from my previous vantage point. 

Here are some steps to get you started:

1. Who are the audiences you will need to communicate with?
2. What are the questions they most want to be answered? 
3. What information is most important to them?

Before the Meeting

Going into a meeting, you should know one of the key outcomes or at least the topic or problem being addressed. 

Depending on the topic, I would connect with key people to see what they were thinking. If there were major concerns or questions. Since I was the subject matter expert of Scrum, there were often many questions of "how?" and "why?"  

Getting on smaller calls allowed others to ask these questions and work through the framework at their own pace. 

This usually helped create a common understanding as a foundation for the discussion and decisions during the meeting. When we didn't have that common foundation, it was really evident and not fun.

After the Meeting

During a meeting, does somebody seems angry, confused or really quiet? These are all good reasons to reach out and connect afterward. 

Was there a misunderstanding? Did they not agree with the decision? 

Often this might start as a Slack message link, "what did you think of the meeting?" Sometimes the conversation stayed in Slack. Other times it became a phone or zoom call. 

The goal of these before and after meetings is a combination of understanding, empathy and alignment. They can feel like they take a lot of time, but they actually save time in the long run. 

As I would look from another perspective, I would see a potential opportunity or pain point that had been hiding in the background from my previous vantage point.

This is especially true when you consider the shared hours used when ten people spend two hours on an unproductive call. That's half a workweek! 

So take the time and put in the work to communicate and connect with others as you begin to sell your ideas more broadly. 

If you're going to run Creative Scrum in your organization, you're going to need alignment from a wide variety of people. Two key steps in this part of the journey are:

1. Outlining the benefits. Identify the benefits of implementing creative scrum in your context. Fill this success bucket and draw from it often when communicating with others.
2. Meetings before the meetings. People can be resistant to change, and going out of the way to initiate with them goes a long way. Take time to understand their needs and goals and then answer their questions.