If you're leading a team or a business you need to deliver value. We all want to do meaningful work that has a positive impact, and Scrum is designed to maximize this kind of value. 

So how does Scrum help me deliver value through my work?

To consistently deliver value, you must overcome various obstacles. Each team or organization has its own unique strengths and challenges, but here are three common challenges I think Scrum addresses well.

1. Prioritization
2. Unclear or changing requirements
3. Complexity

Scrum forces prioritization to happen

Imagine your boss’s boss comes to you excited about a potential feature for a product you’re assigned. You’re uncertain about the value of this feature for the business or client, not to mention you know it will take way more work than they think it will. 

It’s easy to imagine because this situation is so common you may feel like I read through your inbox this morning. Let’s look at how Scrum addresses this challenge.

The product owner plays a crucial role in Scrum. They are responsible for defining and prioritizing the work done to deliver the most value to the business and client. The product owner is the intersection between the team and stakeholders. They continually work with the team to update the prioritization and estimation of work to be done.

This prioritized backlog of work to be done is transparent to anyone, creating clarity and visibility about what the team should and shouldn’t spend time on.

Scrum handles unclear or changing requirements.

We should expect uncertainty; change is inevitable. The past few years have clearly demonstrated this reality. So what do we do? How do we lead? How does the critical work move forward?

Framing the problem creates clarity.

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Requirements are critical in defining the work to be done. But many times, requirements can be ambiguous or continually changing. Scrum uses the tools of user stories and acceptance criteria to clarify the requirements and frame them in terms of the end-user. Framing requirements for the user is a game-changer.

Frequent feedback prevents the team from working very long on “what the stakeholder said, but not what they meant

I’ve had many well-intentioned stakeholders ask for products they would have loved 30 years ago but would be a total miss for our target audience (college students) today. I have to ask, “What do you hope is the impact of this product? What need of the student does it meet, and what action do you hope they will take?” 

These kinds of questions are core to user stories. As we walk through the process, the light bulb usually comes on, and they are willing to step back from their solution and entrust our team to help creatively solve today’s problem.

Working iteratively allows for changes.

Scrum is an iterative process with most of the events commonly occurring on a two-week cycle. These short iterations (sprints) allow the team to receive regular feedback on the work they produce. This frequent feedback prevents the team from working very long on “what the stakeholder said, but not what they meant.”

Scrum brings simplicity to tackle both complexity and volatility

If the requirements change, work is reprioritized by the next sprint, and the team focuses on what will deliver the most value. The team can adapt quickly to these changes.

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Scrum embraces complexity.

I get asked about Scrum a lot. Sometimes, I explain Scrum as a simple framework for tackling complexity by applying a few constraints to empower freedom and creativity. This world is becoming increasingly complex, and so are the projects and products we work on.

It’s tempting to battle complexity with a complex solution, and this becomes more problematic when volatility accompanies the complexity. The complex solution lacks flexibility or resilience and often breaks in an ungraceful way.

Scrum brings simplicity to tackle both complexity and volatility. Scrum doesn’t have a ton of rules and structure, and it has just enough constraints to create clarity around the work to be done, roles and rhythm. These few constraints give the team freedom and flexibility to embrace the complexity and develop solutions.

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If you want to learn how Scrum can help you handle complexity and uncertainty with clarity and focus, 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.