The Scrum framework focuses on managing and organizing work based on a set of values, principles, and practices. The principles are building blocks that will help anyone construct an effective agile team. Without principles, the foundation collapses, and any effort in introducing agile will fail.
There are six principles in Scrum which are:-
- Value Based Prioritization
- Empirical Process Control
- Self - Organization
- Collaboration
- Time-Boxing
- Iterative Development
In this article, we will discuss collaboration. For a Scrum team to collaborate, they need to develop a common awareness of the overall requirement of the project, strengths and limitations of each team member, as well as how team members can contribute to deliver the product.
The three pillars of collaboration are
- Awareness
- Articulation, and
- Appropriation
Awareness means individuals working together need to be aware of each other's work. This can be done by visually displaying the current tasks of each team member, how they're doing to do it and when it's going to be completed. The information displayed is critical and can be retrieved any time by all team members.
The word articulation means with full clarity. The information displayed visually need to be broken into simple terms so that everyone in the team is responsible for completing a task to help achieve a common goal.
The final pillar is appropriation means adapting technology to one's own situation; the technology may be used in a manner completely different than expected by the designers. This is in line with the Agile Manifesto of individuals and interactions over processes and tools. The team works together and uses the technology accordingly based on the project requirements.
The sporting world has a lot of examples of collaboration, for example football. Goalkeepers and defenders protect the goal, midfielders act as a link between attackers and defenders, and attackers score the goal. The focus of the game is to win games by scoring more goals than your opponent.
Traditionally this was the case for football. Now things have changed where even goalkeepers and defenders score goals. They don’t care about being in a fixed role. All they care about is winning. And if defenders are going to score goals, attackers must defend. This is collaboration.
To summarize, collaboration is only successful if all team members are working together to achieve a common goal. For that to happen, the team members need to stick to the 3 pillars of collaboration which are awareness, articulation, and appropriation.
By,
Udhay Sharma
Scrum Certified Trainer,
Scrum Master Certified, Scrum Product Owner Certified, Scrum Developer Certified
Scrum enthusiast since 2017
