A Better Scrum with Essence

Jeff Sutherland and Ivar Jacobson

Agenda

1. Scrum
2. Essence
3. Scrum Essentials
4. Beyond Scrum and Essence
Scrum is a Simple Framework
Where Does Scrum Work?

• In Aug. 2018, Apple

became the first
company in history to
reach a $1 trillion
valuation.
• One month later, Amazon
joined the club (though
has since fallen back to
the billions), and on April
2019, so did Microsoft.
• These are ALL Scrum
companies
 Successful Scrum@Scale Implementations

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© 1993-2020 Jeff Sutherland & Scrum Inc.
Where Does Scrum Come From?

TPS 1950’s Scrum 1990’s Agile 2001 2014

Inspired One Parent Implementation

On Average How is Scrum Working in Industry?

Traditional Projects Agile Projects

Success Challenged Failed
Success Challenged Failed

8%
21% 26%
42%
53% 50%
Why Do Organizations Struggle to be Agile
Not-SCRUM
! Easy The Art of x Slow
Doing
! Fast Half x Hard
the Work
! Fun in Twice x Painful
the
Time
MANY PEOPLE

Characterized by…
! Small, stable, dedicated teams Characterized by…
x Big, unstable teams
! Ready, high-quality backlog
x Poor backlog
! Swarming
x Individual silos
! Interrupt buffer
x No plan for interrupts
! Kaizen x No continuous improvement
! Finish early x Not done at end of sprint

! Autonomous teams x …
Agenda

1. Scrum
2. Essence
3. Scrum Essentials
4. Beyond Scrum and Essence
15 years ago we were in the midst of a Methods War
• There were 1000s of published methods for software development
– ‘Traditional’ as well as Agile
• The most popular methods were owned by gurus who were fighting
with one another instead of collaborating
• In practice, methods had no common ground, no widely adopted
standard
– ”Almost the only thing the methods shared was the alphabet”
• Methods were ‘dead books’ with no guidance when actually working
• Etc
Something needed be done
Essence
 ESSENCE - THE STANDARD COMMON GROUND
For the first time in the 50+ year history of software engineering, we
have got a Common Ground (in 2014) for all Methods and Frameworks

Technical Human
• It guides with a modern user • It is a thinking framework
experience (poker-sized cards) • It has numerous placeholders
• It focuses on what is essential for conversations
• It has two components: • Software development is a set
– The Essence Language of serious, interactive games
– The Essence Kernel

Creating winning teams.

Creating winning teams.
Things to do Things to work with
Creating winning teams.
The original value proposition of Essence
• The focus on the essentials results in lightweight methods
• A modern user experience – based on poker-sized cards – allowing
teams to play serious games
• Practices are liberated from their methods and made available in an
eco-system
• Teams can (with mandated restrictions) select their own method by
composing practices from this eco-system

Methods are Compositions of Practices

Agenda

1. Scrum
2. Essence
3. Scrum Essentials
4. Beyond Scrum and Essence
Build Your Own Scrum
• Cut out all the pieces of Scrum on
the Essence cards
• Arrange them on the flip chart
paper to represent Scrum with
arrows and labels to show
relationships
• Implemented with thousands of
people in hundreds of companies.
Comments
• “I’ve been doing Scrum for six
years.”
• ”I learned more new things in one
hour with this exercise than in all
six years I’ve been doing Scrum!”
Findings
• Hundreds of people from hundreds of
companies
• 21 components of Scrum
• On average
– 7 components implemented well
– 7 done poorly
– 7 not implemented
• On average dysfunctional Scrum is
implemented
• This is why 58% of Scrum does not
work
Customer/Vendor Relations Can Cause Systemic Failure
Activity Deliverables are Key to Most Dysfunction
Improving Deliverables is the Solution
Drilling Down to Identify Detailed Solutions
Bottom Line
• 58% of Scrum implementations fail
• Essence can quickly identify cause
of failure
• Essence is the key to driving
success
– Drill down into components causing
failure
– Identify specific parts of the
component that are not functioning
– Implement process improvement
• Essence can apply scientific
analysis to straighten out poor
Agile thinking
Agenda

1. Scrum
2. Essence
3. Scrum Essentials
4. Beyond Scrum and Essence
Beyond Scrum: Scrum@Scale
• Quicken Loans (Rocket Mortgage) is the
largest mortgage loan provider in the U.S.
• Implemented scaled agile framework with
26 release trains for 17000 people
• Cycle time for feature development
dropped from 86 days to 42 days.
• The Brand Marketing release train, the
digital storefront deployed scaled scrum
patterns.
• Scaled scrum patterns amplified reduction
in average cycle time to 21 days which was
340% better than other release trains.
https://pex.ivarjacobson.com/sites/default/files/practice/scrum_at_scale_cards.html
Beyond Essence: Essence in Practice
New Use-Cases to everyone! • Building a forever learning organization
Executive • Moving from Craft to Engineering

Essence
In
Practice
Team Team member
• Raising Competence • Learning for Life

And many more:

• Program, product and project managers
• Teachers and researchers
• Methodologists
• Etc.
Let’s zoom in on Raising Competence of Teams
One of the primary reasons for failure of agile projects:
The lack of sufficient knowledge and experience in applying basic agile techniques.

Knowledge Experience
• Learning a new Practice • From an eco-system
• Guidance in applying a new
Practice • Alive through local or global
contributors
• Updating a Practice
• Changing to a new Practice

Addressing acquisition of Knowledge and Experience

(Learning)
A Team’s Competence Journey follows an infinity loop:
Learning / Delivery

Discover Plan

Learning Delivery
Explore Do
Cycle Cycle
Adapt

Adopt Check
 A Team’s Competence Journey follows an infinity loop:
Learning / Delivery

Discover Plan

The sweet spot for many

Learning Delivery tools supporting agile
Essence in Practice Explore Do
Cycle Cycle mgmt., such as Jira, Gitlab
Adapt

Adopt Check

Essence in Practice supports the team to continually Learn and Deliver

- not just deliver
More about Essence
• More than 10 universities around the
world are already teaching Essence.
– Quote by Prof Pekka Abrahamsson, JYU,
Finland: “my Software Engineering education
in the future will be driven by Essence.”
WELCOME TO THE FUTURE
It is here today

Contact us
Jeff Sutherland <jeff.sutherland@scruminc.com>
Ivar Jacobson <ivar@ivarjacobson.com>