Improving Scrum by Attending to Flow, not Merely Using It

 

Preset approaches often lead to a lack of “fit for purpose”
Without a theory explaining why and how to improve delivery of value, one can only attend to practices. This is a slow process. 

“Theory without practices is useless. Practice without theory is expensive” paraphrase of E. Deming

Creating a way to make choices does not need to create complexity in the approach. Those who say otherwise just haven’t figured out a way to do it. Learning how to do this also prepares you to continuously improve.

Since our goal is to shorten the time from request to realization of value, we should attend to the entire value stream.

Scrum is mostly based on cross-functional teams and time-boxing.
This is good and results in:
• Fewer handoffs, handbacks and delays in workflow
• Smaller work items
• Frequent finished work product
• Avoiding workload beyond capacity

These are core principles of flow. This is good because these all help eliminate the creation of waste.

Attending to achieving these results directly is more effective than trying to follow Scrum’s practices because doing so keeps your eye on the target, creates awareness for alternative practices and avoids the risk that the framework's practices are not fit for purpose