Scrum, Lean, Design Thinking,

Kanban, and XP
Scrum...Lean...Design Thinking...Get past juggling the jargon, and use this guide
to find an approach that gets your team building the right thing, and building the
thing right.

What do these approaches mean anyway?

Scrum: An iterative and incremental framework for managing software

development projects, that enables self-organization and collective from the
team.

Lean: A mindset and approach for eliminating waste, that looks at the system as a
whole.

Design thinking: A creative strategy for design, and a structured approach to

ideation and creative product development.

XP (Extreme Programming): A software development methodology focused on

improving the code that the team builds, and helping them to be more responsive
to changing customer needs.

Kanban: A lean method for improving the way that a team builds software, based
on collaborative and experimental process improvement.

Principles and Practices Go Hand in Hand

Methods, frameworks, and methodologies like Scrum and XP are driven by

practices. But they’re much more effective when the team has the right mindset.
If you’ve tried some of these practices but haven’t seen the stellar results you
were hoping for, remember that it starts with the values that you share—and
reinforce—as a team.
Take time as a team to talk about what you value most, and where you need
“tuning up,” then use practices from these methods, methodologies, and
frameworks that flow from those values the best. When you all uphold those
values, you’ll all get more out of the practices.

Agile Values: Build the Right Thing, Build the

Thing Right
Customer centricity
Respect for each other
Creativity and fresh thinking
Freedom to try new things
Open communication and feedback loops
Improving process and product
Iteration to improve
Focus on tasks and schedule

Here are some common challenges that teams face, and some ideas from these
methods, frameworks, and methodologies that can help. Which challenge does
your team want to tackle?

Are you building the right thing?

Challenge: Clarifying the customers’ problems and goals

Interviewing and observing your customers for deeper insight about their
problems.
Forming a problem statement that is relevant to customers, that your
organization can tackle.
Challenge: Creating something that customers have never seen before

Generating ideas for the best way to solve those problems, and achieve their
goals, not just optimizing the existing product.

Challenge: Getting buy-in from customers and stakeholders

Co-designing solutions with customers and stakeholders, so they are creating

with you, and using prototypes with you, and not just critiquing.

Challenge: Minimizing risk to your organization

Building, releasing, and testing as little as possible to learn as much as

possible.

Are you building the thing right?

Challenge: Giving the whole team a say

Involve the whole team in creating and owning the project plan.
Reflect as a team how to be more effective and tune your working style
accordingly.

Challenge: Getting clear about roles and responsibilities

Assign a Product Owner to own what you’re building and trust the
production side of the team to own how you’re building it.

Challenge: Helping the team to focus

Make sure someone shields the team from extra communications and
interrupting stakeholders.
 Have the team sit together. If it’s a distributed team, use online collaboration
software, but tweak it to minimize notifications from outside the team.

Challenge: Sorting out multiple dependencies

Visualize all streams of work to spot wasted effort and bottlenecks.

Challenge: Improving morale and sense of progress

Resist the temptation to move deadlines and re-do what’s in the current
sprint and stay committed to a showcase at the end.
Celebrate the small wins, like spotting “code smells,” and visualize how
work is getting completed by posting it on the wall in a common area.

Your Turn
Choose an approach with values that match your team and company culture.
Choose practices that address real problems.
Find a great agile coach; there might already be one in your organization.
Start with simple practices in one team, but always reinforce why you’re
doing them.
Think of your customers’ needs and how you can best address them.
Share with other teams what works well and what doesn’t; what works for
one team might not work for yours.

You have 6 days left in your trial, Maximushoang. Subscribe today. See pricing
options.

Generated with Reader Mode