Conclusions

Scrum works only if everything is kept visible for frequent inspection and adaptation. To be empirical, everyone must know that about which they are inspecting. Practices such as the Sprint review meeting, the Daily Scrum, the Sprint Backlog, and the Product Backlog keep everything visible for inspection. Rules such as not being able to interrupt a team during a Sprint keep the adaptations from turning meaningful progress into floundering, as overadaptation overwhelms the project.

The ScrumMaster must keep everything visible at a meaningful level of detail. At MegaEnergy, Scrum was made visible through existing reporting mechanisms. Ruth made learning about Scrum easy for executives because she used their language. At MegaBank, Helen had the team figure out Jim’s language. Only then was Jim able to understand a Scrum project’s progress. To create visibility in these instances, the ScrumMaster had to adapt Scrum to the organization.