“Won’t all this process stifle freedom and creativity?”

This is a familiar question from leaders who first learn the Scrum framework. They are feeling overwhelmed by the new roles and events in Scrum.

It’s an understandable reaction, but I’d like to share three responses to this kind of concern.

• Clearer, not more
• Constraints that inspire provide freedom
• A malleable system

Clearer, not more

Something interesting happens when teams implement Scrum or even just pivot toward adopting some of its practices. They actually spend less time in meetings and are initially surprised by this. So what’s happening here?

Scrum brings a higher level of clarity to meetings. There’s clarity around frequency, purpose, agenda and duration.

When first learning Scrum, most people see all the meetings at once and think there are more than they had before. But think about the typical meetings; staff meetings, status meetings, prioritization meetings, project planning meetings, project re-planning meetings, and other ad hoc meetings. 

Scrum often leads to less time in meetings, but the purpose and timing of the sessions are more transparent.

Scrum brings a higher level of clarity to meetings. There’s clarity around frequency, purpose, agenda and duration.

The other common pitfall is that people try to overlay Scrum on top of what they are already doing. They’re thinking, “I don’t have time to add all of these meetings to my schedule. You shouldn’t be adding. You should be swapping.

This shift can be challenging for people to envision. “How can we not have a staff meeting?” If this is what you’re thinking, I encourage you to consider the outcomes of a staff meeting or any of the other meetings you’re concerned about losing, and then look to see if that outcome is realized with the sessions outlined in the Scrum framework. Evaluating these meetings provides the needed insight to adjust to the new cadence in Scrum.

Constraints that inspire provide freedom.

There’s a common conception that constraints limit creativity, but the contrary is true. Think about when you’re staring at a blank page. Whether writing or drawing, it can be hard to know where to start. In one sense, anything is possible, so we’re not inspired to move in any one direction.

Constraints actually inspire creativity because they force us to think of a new way of doing something. When constraints are in place,  it stimulates creativity by placing us in problem-solving mode.

When I layout a landing page for a website, I have millions of colors and fonts to choose from and pixels to align by. But if I don’t constrain some of this, it will be a mess. When I constrain the alignment, it gives more freedom with color and weight. When I constrain the color and weight, there is more freedom with alignment. 

The same thing is happening in Scrum. The way work is defined and prioritized is constrained. But this gives greater freedom in how the work gets done.

A malleable system

While Scrum is clearly defined, it is not rigid. One of the pillars is adaptation. Every sprint, every day even, there is an opportunity to inspect, evaluate, and adapt. The system is designed to serve the team and the organization, not the other way around. 

Let’s look at how the system can still be malleable.

When implementing Scrum within a creative department, an area we quickly recognized as needing some adaptation was video production. It was a more linear stepped process of ideation, development, pre-production, production, post-production, and delivery. Some of those steps fit within a single sprint and would need to be spread over multiple sprints. 

Then there was the question of where the director or producer's role fit within the Scrum system. Adapting it took several iterations. We eventually landed with a template for video production user stories, and people’s work capacity could be allocated across the stories within each sprint. To bring continuity to an individual video being produced, we treated it like a sub-product, a product within the larger product, where the director and producer acted somewhat like a product owner within that limited scope.

I would encourage a team or an organization to begin with a more pure implementation of Scrum and after they are up and running, adapt as needed. 

But be careful. Sometimes when too much adaptation occurs before even the first sprint, it’s a veiled attempt to continue doing what we’ve always done and call it Scrum.

Next steps​ for applying Scrum.

Hopefully, this post introduced you to how Scrum holds freedom and flexibility in tension.

If you want to learn more about Scrum in general, 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 1-hour coaching session, and we can work together to identify a good next step for you.