Are you wearing your Scarf?
Almost 90 to 95% EDCs we have at Ness follow agile principles.
We can sense that Agile principles emphasise more on “People” (I find that atleast 6 out of 12 Agile principles are related to “People”).
Here, “People” comprise EDC Team(s), customer’s engineering, management members and executives.
EDCs have people from different backgrounds & culture, making it critical to know How and Whypeople think / react / respond to certain situations, and how we all should adjust to the mind-set in those situations required for being successful in Agile.
In the book Quiet Leadership, the author defines a model called SCARF, demonstrating how human brain responds to five social experiences –
Status – How am I treated in a team relatively as compared to others?
Certainty – Am I being informed about the future?
Autonomy – Am I given control / authority / empowered?
Relatedness – Are others thinking like me? Am I connected with others?
Fairness – Am I treated consistently in the same pattern as others?
These SCARF elements create either a Threat (fear) response, or Reward response, eventually either improving or degrading people’s performance and ability to become creative.
Now, below is how I think SCRUM framework and its ceremonies have been designed to address these elements which can boost Reward signals or pull down Threat signals in the Team member / Customer’s brain. You may identify some additions.
This model justifies why Agile / SCRUM is so successful, since it addresses some core thinking elements of people. Hence for being a successful agile team, we should keep these elements in mind to enhance the outcome.
Some examples –
- Understand & respect eagerness of Product Owner to know if we are on track for the release milestones (Certainty).
- Team empowering each other giving justification of estimates, rather than getting into debate (Autonomy / Status/ Fairness).
- Talk with business users in terms of UserStory format, rather than using technical jargons or other templates that are specific to engineering (Relatedness).
