Among the core values of Scrum methodology is openness. Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, the creators of Scrum pointed out the five values of Scrum, which are – Focus, Commitment, Courage, Respect and Openness. Although the values of Scrum may seem obvious, they can be difficult to implement in the traditional environments of organizations. If you are going to succeed as a web developer team, you need to tell everyone all the things pertaining to your work. You need to highlight and alert the team members when you encounter challenges and problems that begin to hinder you from moving forward with your task.
What’s Scrum Methodology?
Scrum is considered an agile method of managing projects, it’s a framework that is used principally in software development projects to help deliver new software capability in spans of 2 to 4 weeks. The spans are known as Sprints. Scrum is the most popular of the agile methodologies. A report on the 12th annual State of Agile shows that 70 percent of software development teams use Scrum or some hybrid of Scrum. Not only is Scrum used in software development teams, it’s also spread to other functions of businesses like marketing and IT where projects have to advance and move forward despite the hindrances created by ambiguity and complexity. Leadership teams also based their agile management functions on Scrum often pulling in other practises like lean and Kanban.
Businesses that adopt Scrum in their agile management experience higher productivity, reduced time to market, better team dynamics, improved stakeholders satisfaction, better quality of products, and happier employees.
Scrum tries to solve the complexity in work or a project by allowing transparency of information so that team members can inspect and adapt depending on the prevailing conditions instead of predicted conditions. Teams, with the transparency of information, are able to deal with the common pitfalls brought about by the traditional waterfall development process.
In waterfall mechanism or development process, the team members are separated, they don’t collaborate, they work in silos. In silos, individuality is embraced, everyone works on their own, and the result is disparate systems in an organization. The waterfall development process has problems like chaos due to constantly changing requirements, resources and cost, underestimation of time, compromised software quality, inaccurate progress reporting, or improper testing and lack of feedback on a release. The transparency that is fostered by Scrum helps in that, these problems are addressed and a project is delivered as it was expected.
Frequent inspections ensure there is progress and variances are detected early to allow adjustment to be made quickly. Scrum events that are used to inspect and adapt to a project are the Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Daily Scrum or Stand up, and Sprint Retrospective. When you hire website developers who use Scrum to manage their teams, you are able to enjoy transparency and speed of delivery of the website project.
Who’s a Scrum Master?
In Scrum teams, there are three main roles which include the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team. The Scrum Master is the facilitator of the team to deliver to the Product Owner. A Scrum Master has no hierarchical authority over a development team but rather takes the role of a facilitator. The Scrum Master protects the development team by helping it perform at the optimal level. For example, the Scrum Master removes impediments, facilitates meetings, and helps the Product Owner to prepare the backlog.
Why a Scrum Master Should Embrace Openness
The Scrum methodology functions under a set of values like openness and courage. Openness is very important when it comes to ensuring clarity and transparency. Unless an individual in a Scrum team is open, it is difficult to move forward in unison. Friction may begin to happen and the team is disoriented. For teamwork to succeed, some level of openness is required in the sense that, when a member of the development team experiences difficulties in completing a task or work because of a hitch, he or she needs to speak up so that he or she gets assistance from the other team members.
The concept of openness, clarity, or transparency is seen in every sphere of Scrum methodology. Scrum teams are known to be open and transparent about their work, the challenges the face, the progress they have made, and their relationships. Scrum is open to collaboration across different disciplines. Different experts and other stakeholders of a project give and receive feedback. The teams learn from one another and they have the freedom to change.
As the facilitator of a development team, the Scrum Master needs to display openness. Many people don’t understand what openness means and its significance in project development. It is also difficult to recognize openness and understand how it can be applied.
Openness allows the members in a team to seek or ask for help. It allows the team members offer assistance whenever it is needed thus allowing teamwork to prevail. Openness helps cement teamwork and eliminates the aspect of individuality or silos. It helps make the productivity of the team to be more efficient. Openness allows teams to share opinions, suggestions, and ideas without feeling left out or intimidated. It gives the team vibe since an individual is able to air out their suggestions, speak their opinions, real out their perspective, talk their challenges, and make other contributions. So each and every team member becomes part of broader team decision-making. If hire a web developer who has a team guided by Scrum methodology, you will be able to see efficiency in the website development project.
Openness is Beyond Transparency
Transparency is a term that many advocates of Scrum use to refer to openness. However, while Scrum relies on transparency, openness is a key ingredient of the core values of the methodology. Both transparency and openness are mutually supportive. Transparency refers to seeing things clearly, it’s the initial step towards inspection and adaption. Transparency helps change things for the better. On the other hand, openness is much about the interaction of people, how individuals in a group or team interact. Openness supports transparency and mostly relates to interactions between individuals.
Being a pillar or supporting post of the Empirical Process Control Theory, transparency is an essential element of Scrum. Transparency helps people see problems more clearly, and that’s a big thumb up. The downside is that transparency can reveal appalling issues in a team. Even when being transparency, you want also to be open. This allows you to create an environment where a team can discuss issues without fear. Transparency, on its own, cannot support the freedom of expression in a team, but openness can do.
A Scrum Master is able to detect incomplete transparency in a team by sensing patterns and inspecting artifacts such as product backlog, sprint backlog, or even increment as described by the Product Owner. Incomplete transparency can also be detected by the Scrum Master if he or she spots differences between the real results of a project and the expected results. Listening closely to what team member are saying may also unearth incomplete transparency.
So, when you look at how transparency is applied by the Scrum Master, it feels like there is kind of a fault-finder or detective environment created in the team. And that’s not how Scrum Masters should interact with the team when having discussions. Openness becomes a strong preposition for ensuring more collaboration in work inspection and the challenges that the team members face. Openness supports transparency within tasks, projects, and processes – without which there may be an inability to inspect the team honestly and try adapting the team for better. In a team there can be transparency, however, the team may not be capable to discuss issues and learn together- something more is needed- and that’s openness.
Conclusion
Openness involves a process of active sharing, listening, revealing, responding, and understanding. It allows individuals in a team to see each other as humans or people and not just roles. Openness facilitates collaboration and empiricism in teamwork. When team members are open, it helps create transparency to their progress and without transparency, attempts to inspect and adapt to changes is flawed.
Also, openness allows individuals in a team to ask for help. It allows team members to extend a helping hand to their colleagues when there is pressure or increased workload on one member. Team members can tap the value of openness by sharing their perspectives and ensuring they feel heard by their colleagues. Openness helps support team decisions, everyone can make their contributions in the decision-making process. Last but not least, openness helps individuals admit were things have gone wrong and accept to take the change direction. You can tap the benefits of Scrum by hiring an Indian web developers team that embraces the culture of Scrum methodology.
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