Scrum Needs Leadership Support - Mike Cohn

Scrum Needs Leadership Support - Mike Cohn

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is treating Scrum or agile as something isolated to the teams.
The teams will be agile.
The teams will do Scrum.
The teams will hold the meetings.
The teams will become faster.
But the surrounding organization remains largely unchanged.
That is not sustainable.
Scrum asks teams to focus, collaborate, inspect, adapt, and deliver valuable increments of work. For that to happen, leaders have to create an environment where those behaviors are possible.
That often means eliminating silos and forming cross-functional teams. It means giving teams a challenge and then getting out of the way enough for them to solve it. It means resisting the temptation to second-guess team decisions. It means allowing teams to tell the truth about overly optimistic deadlines, unrealistic scope, and risks they see in the work.
A team cannot do its best work while being pressured to commit to things it does not believe are feasible.
A team cannot be self-managing if every meaningful decision is made somewhere else.
A team cannot deliver predictably if leaders constantly redirect it and then act surprised when the original plan is not met.
Good leadership support means shaping the environment so teams can succeed.
When a desired deadline or desired scope is not feasible, leaders and teams should treat that as a shared problem to solve.
Maybe the scope can be reduced. Maybe more time is needed. Maybe a different approach is possible. Maybe another initiative should be delayed. Maybe the organization needs to accept more risk.
The first step is telling the truth.
Scrum works better in organizations where truth is welcome.
Try this: The next time a team says a deadline or scope is not feasible, don’t ask, “How can you still make it?” Ask, “What would need to change for this to become feasible?”
That question turns the conversation from pressure into problem solving.

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