Scrum and Passion, an interview with Dave West

 


 


In this episode we talk with Dave West, CEO and Product Owner of
Scrum.org. Here are the key take-aways:


Passion by delivering things that are valued by customers


Scrum is a response to the underlying need for empiricism and
self-organization for software teams. Now that results in amazing
products for customers, because you're continuously testing your
hypothesis by delivering working software to customers, and it
also ultimately results in teams that are much happier, much more
content, much more, you know, having fun, because ultimately
what's the most enjoyable thing that any team can do? Deliver,
and deliver software that people want, or deliver product that
people want, or deliver value that people want, and I think that
is ultimately what Scrum is all about.


Passionate teams care about the people they work with


You actually care about the people you work with. You care about
the people that you spend every day, you know, delivering value
to, and I think there's a third dimension, which is about the
mission. I think that certainly for me the most passionate teams
that I've been on, and the most enjoyable teams I've been on, are
ones where my personal mission is aligned with their mission and
with the organization's mission. When you've got that synergy, I
think it's very easy to care very deeply about what you're doing
and the people you're working with and the outcomes you're
achieving.


Humor creates a passionate environment


Of course, everybody has to be a little, you know, can't take
themselves too seriously, and laughs at the world around them a
little bit, because that ultimately creates an environment of
passion, of success, of et cetera, but they didn't add it, but I
do wish that we had humor. I think sometimes we get very- take
ourselves a little too seriously, and I think if you can smile at
the situation you're in, and as a team if you can share that, you
know. […] I think, because of their ability to work as a team and
to have passion and to support each other and to deliver,
ultimately, the results that they needed.


Scrum is in response to the social system we live in


I think some of the reasons why people are unhappy is because
ultimately the social systems, and I consider organizations and
the teams and the structures and the departments, et cetera, to
be ultimately a social system, the social systems that we
constructed as part of Industrial Revolution and sort of the
change in the 1900s with Taylorism and Ford and the like, the
social systems that we created ultimately are not designed for
the world that we now live in. [. …] Ultimately these social
systems are built around reducing risk and ensuring
predictability and ensuring that everything just goes in this
very efficient way, efficiency, predictability, and risk are sort
of like the tenets of modern organization. […] Well, we live in a
world of opportunity, a world of really innovation where it isn't
about whether you can do something. It's how you can do it, is it
economic to do it, is it the right thing to do, the rise of agile
and particularly, you know, Scrum being the most popular agile
approach, is definitely in response to this world that we live
in.


The most happy and successful teams are agile


The most successful, most happy teams I've seen are agile. Now
whether they're doing Scrum or not, you know, but they're working
empirically, they have control of their destiny, they have an
alignment to some sort of vision and passion and direction.


Passionate teams work and help in community


So I love organizations where you are rewarded for being really
good at what you do. That also means to be good at what you do
requires you to help others do what you do. […] If I end up with
these heavy dependencies on people, well, one, that's a huge
risk. But also it's not very scalable. So instead, let them teach
others, whether it's pairing or mobbing or whatever, to all get
better, and then over time then everybody's helping each other
but you reward them for it. You incentivize them for it. You pay
them for it. […] But it's more in a community or guild or a
whatever weird word you want to use, but I love community, and I
think we need to incentivize people for working in community and
helping community. And that's actually not just true inside
organizations. I think in general we should reward people for
their contributions to community rather than their ability to
have hundreds of people report to them.


Safety and trust are the key for passionate teams


Safety and trust are key words for building these kind of teams,
and safety and trust require focus and energy. You have to give
people freedom, learn together, and understand where the
boundaries are. There's certain things ... You're building
pacemakers. You do have to have other people check your work
before you deploy it, you know? I mean, you don't want a
pacemaker to go wrong. Nobody wants that.