Agile Suggestions (S1E#4) - Empiricism

"Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on the essentials.

Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and to control risk."

...

"Scrum combines four formal events for inspection and adaptation within a containing event, the Sprint. These events work because they implement the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation."

Transparency

"The emergent process and work must be visible to those performing the work as well as those receiving the work. With Scrum, important decisions are based on the perceived state of its three formal artifacts ... Transparency enables inspection. Inspection without transparency is misleading and wasteful."

Inspection

"The Scrum artifacts and the progress toward agreed goals must be inspected frequently and diligently to detect potentially undesirable variances or problems. To help with inspection, Scrum provides cadence in the form of its five events. Inspection enables adaptation. Inspection without adaptation is considered pointless. Scrum events are designed to provoke change."

Adaptation

"If any aspects of a process deviate outside acceptable limits or if the resulting product is unacceptable, the process being applied or the materials being produced must be adjusted. The adjustment must be made as soon as possible to minimize further deviation.Adaptation becomes more difficult when the people involved are not empowered or self-managing. A Scrum Team is expected to adapt the moment it learns anything new through inspection."

Learning Culture

Many teams adopted a scrum way of working. Not all might be doing it perfect but they are on their journey to improve from where they are today towards a better state. Teams which have adopted this empirical mindset, set themselves up for future success: 

• Objectify reality:gather information and make it visible

• Confront yourself as a team with reality and seek for the why's: why are things happening

• Come with a small plan to adjust the product, the practice or the process and actually improve forward.  

Plan-Do-Check-Act

As stated earlier, the empirical process means deriving knowledge from observation and experience instead of old fashioned theoretical planning and making assumptions. The Scrum Framework is based on the PDCA Cycle and by default implements the principle of inspection and adaptation: 

• Plan
  Defining the goal and expected outcomes and decide how (practice and process) this will be delivered. 

• Do
  Execution of the work according to the committed plan.

• Check
  Measure and analyse the delivered results and compare them with the initial plan

• Act
  Critically investigate the plan, the outcomes and the process to determine areas of improvement. Implement these improvements in the next cycle. 

Scrum tells us to run short and time-boxed iterations so that assumptions made in planning are checked-in with reality sooner and often, eventually leading to improved quality and actual value. 

Embrace the Power of Yet

The status quo is a powerful attractor. When we want to change things, we have to be mindful of this.
A nice way to dampen the status quo attractor is to adopt a growth mindset, stay curious for what could be, add "yet" to your thoughts. If you think it cannot be done, add yet and rethink what you can already do for now. 

Keep experimenting and learning forward.

#notaponycamp