How do I keep my team focused on the right work?
Lead your team to an agile way of working.
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“Busy.” Is this the default answer when someone asks, “How are you doing?”
Life and work often come at us at an overwhelming rate with more to do than we have time for. If you’re a leader, you feel this even more for both yourself and your team.
How do you keep yourself and your team focused on the right work in this frenetic environment?
In this article, I dive into challenges like:
- Working in rhythm
- Focusing when there is too much work for our time.
- Focusing when there is too much time for our work.
Learn to focus by learning to work in rhythm
We are creatures of rhythm; days, months, seasons, years. When we find a healthy and effective balance between work and time we are more effective as individuals and teams.
Whether we’re overloaded with work or our schedule is completely blank, we feel untethered from our design when we’re out of rhythm.
When there is too much work, you must decide which work is more important.
I’ve led teams for 20 years and tried many strategies to provide a healthy cadence that produces creativity and collaboration, leading us to our goals. One of those strategies that we’ll discuss more today is called Scrum.
Scrum is a framework that uses team events to create a rhythm of visibility, evaluation, and adaptation. I won’t go deep into the history of Scrum or how to practice Scrum in this article. I want to focus on how Scrum can help you focus your team. Afterward, if you want to learn more about Scrum, check out my What is Scrum? Guide.
Various events make up the rhythm of Scrum, and it can be hard to keep track of them all. Understanding and implementing these events creates a cadence of execution for your team, supporting both agility and clarity for the work to be done. Let’s look at some of the ways Scrum provides the rhythm for a team.
The daily rhythm of a standup.
Each day the team meets for 15 minutes to update where they’re at and plan the work for the day. This brief daily rhythm keeps the team focused and in sync.
The weekly rhythm of a sprint.
Scrum teams work in sprints of usually 1-3 weeks in length. When one sprint ends another begins. The sprints create an overall cadence for the team while having an internal rhythm of their own.
They begin with sprint planning to set the goal and clarify what work will be done. And the sprint ends with a sprint review to evaluate what was produced and the retrospective to evaluate how the team worked.
Finding focus when there is too much work for our time.
Have you ever been overwhelmed by so many priorities you can’t decide where to focus? Even if you did, you’re not sure you have enough time to deliver a good outcome. This is a case of too much work for our time.
The critical need here is prioritization. When there is too much work, you must decide which work is more important. Let’s look at two challenges you’ll face when prioritizing.
- How do I decide the order?
- Where do we draw the line?
How do I decide the order?
Who’s call is it when deciding what is more important?
In Scrum, the role of the product owner has decision authority. Their responsibility is to order the backlog of work with the highest priority on top. They collaborate with the development team during the backlog refinement event. But they are responsible for deciding what will deliver the most value.
When working with a team to prioritize, it can be helpful to facilitate a sorting exercise. Place each task on a card or sticky note and collect them all together. Pull one out and discuss with the team what it is and what is required. Once there is clarity about the work, place the card on the board or a table.
Pull out another one and repeat the process, this time in the end ask, “Is this higher priority or lower priority than the first task?” You can then continue the process, each time adding one card at a time to the group by its relative priority. If you want to reorder as you go along that’s totally ok.
Where do we draw the line?
Another piece of focusing the team is knowing what is in or out of scope. Once you have a prioritized list of work, you need to know where to draw the line. The question is, “How far down this list are we going to work?”
To answer that question, you need to know how much work each task will take and your team's capacity. Scrum tasks, or user stories, are sized based on how much work they take.
It’s not an absolute size like 10 hours because that depends on who’s doing the tasks. (At that point, you’re sizing the people rather than the work). Scrum uses relative sizing that can be measured with numbers, often called story points, or intervals like t-shirt sizes of small, medium and large.
After each sprint, the Scrum master will record how much work the team did by looking at the total complete story points. You have the team's velocity when you average the totals over the last 3-5 sprints.
When a team knows its velocity, or average amount of work per sprint, they can be confident about how much work they can take on for a given sprint. The sprint is a safe space where no work can be added unless the whole team agrees that it is necessary.
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Finding focus when there is too much time for our work.
Have you ever had a project with far off deadline? Were you motivated to get started? Or did you spend too much time getting small parts of it perfect? This is a case of too much time for our work.
The critical need is clarity and structure. Too much time is like a blank canvas, and it's intimidating to start and thus easy to delay. Scrum provides a structure through a sprint, creating a deadline and clarity about how much is expected to be done.
The sprint goal creates clarity about the why of the sprint. And what is moved to the sprint backlog during sprint planning clearly delineates the what of the sprint, defining the exact value expected to be delivered.
Too much time is like a blank canvas, and it's intimidating to start and thus easy to delay.
The team still has agency to set the how they will accomplish the work, who will do it and in what order. The empowerment is essential for the team to have both the ownership and accountability needed for highly effective teams.
Even in the shortness of a two-week sprint, team members can lose focus. Events like the daily standup provide a rhythm for evaluation and adaptation, and it serves as a daily moment for the team to have the highest clarity and focus.
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.
Finding focus when work gets stuck.
One final way a team can lose focus is when work is blocked, whether by a lack of resources or cooperation from a specific person. In Scrum, one of the critical responsibilities of the Scrum Master is to remove obstacles so that the team has what they need to do their job.
Related Guides
Action Plan
Staying focused is critical to a team's effectiveness, and I hope this article provided you with some actionable strategies for your team. If you want to learn more about getting started with Scrum, check out my What is Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum. If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
Still not sure about your next step with Scrum? I offer a couple of free coaching sessions each month. You can signup for a free 30-minutes coaching session, and we can work together to identify a good next step for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Scrum team
How does a scrum team work?
The scrum team is made up of the product owner, scrum master and development team. They each play important roles.
- The product owner maximizes the value delivered by the product.
- The scrum master maximizes the impact of the development team.
- The development team transforms the product vision into reality.
Learn more about how a scrum team works together. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is a Scrum Master a project manager?
Project managers and scrum masters differ in where they focus and what they emphasize.
The project manager is focused first on the work. Does the project have everything it needs to get done? The scrum master is focused first on the people. Are they the best team they can be to get projects done?
Continue learning about the relationship between a scrum master and a project manager. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Can a scrum master be a developer?
This combo is very doable, but it depends on the person. Some people are great team contributors but are not good scrum masters.
Often, people suggest the type A personality to be the Scrum Master because they seem like the typical leader type. Unfortunately, what usually happens here is that person begins to act like the team's boss, which is not the role of the scrum masters.
Learn more about the roles of a scrum team. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What’s the right scrum team size?
With less than three, you don’t get much of the benefit of collaboration or shared momentum. More than nine, and the logistics of coordination start to eat away at the benefits of coordination.
Learn more about how a scrum team works together. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Development team
What is the development team?
They are fully focused on the product, owning the whole together. They collaborate tightly with each other to transform the product vision into reality. The team should contain all the skillsets needed to develop the product. As a self-organizing team, they have significant autonomy to decide how to get their work done.
Learn more about the roles and responsibilities of the development team. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What does self-organizing mean?
They don’t report to the scrum master or product owner. The team has significant freedom to identify how to solve the problems and deliver the features which the product owner has prioritized
Learn more about self-organizing teams.
Explore further how a scrum development team works. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Does a Scrum development team have to be programmers?
Scrum has been applied extensively to software development over the years, but it is not inherently limited to this space. You can apply scrum with a marketing team, a creative media team, a blogger or even homeschoolers.
Learn more about what it means to be part of a scrum development team. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What does a scrum development team do each day?
Each day the team meets for a daily standup to share progress, obstacles and plan the current day together. From there, they collaborate to do whatever is necessary to deliver the required value.
Learn more about the roles and responsibilities of the development team. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
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.
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.
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.
