8 Surprising Benefits of Scrum You’ve Never Thought About
Scrum is becoming one of the hottest things in project management. This approach was first introduced for software development projects, but in today’s world, it’s used in all imaginable sectors.
Much has been written about Scrum artefacts and roles, but if we look at it from the perspective of a Scrum Master, we’ll see that Scrum is truly about people over processes. It’s about making a personal difference to people in your team, which brings benefits to everyone, including your business.
Here are eight surprising things that make Scrum an amazing agile way of project management.
1. Team members who have a lot of knowledge are encouraged to talk more and share their expertise. This means they can eventually have guilt-free holidays without disturbing work calls as they are not the only ones who know all ‘abc’ about ‘x’.
2. Knowledge sharing guarantees stability and provides a solid base for business development. Even if a team member decides to leave, the team (and the business) will feel secure because they have enough knowledge and competence to continue the working process.
3. Team members are encouraged to avoid doing overtime for sprints. Otherwise, the team won’t know what they’re realistically capable of during usual working hours that are allocated for a sprint. After all, what can be better than going home (instead of another overtime session) and knowing that you’re free?
4. When people don’t have to work overtime, they have the opportunity to indulge in personal interests and hobbies. This will make your team members happier, which in a long run means higher productivity and more creative solutions.
5. Based on the above, finding work/life balance will increase job satisfaction. It gives people motivation to work better and be committed to what they’re doing.
6. As soon as the sprint duration is usually short, there’s a need for accelerated learning. And this is a very good reason to try new approaches, new languages, etc. It’s easier to take risks, and thanks to retrospectives all team members can push their learning levels up.
7. Scrum reveals true leaders. Self-managing teams are an essential part of Scrum but they still need a good project manager. The working process helps to reveal who is only capable of bossing people around and who is a true leader that can inspire and empower others.
8. Scrum means there’s no “them” and “us” – we are all in this game together working as a collective and helping the whole business as well as every team member to thrive and unlock their potential.
