Similarities in cycling and practicing Scrum.

I remember when I first tried riding a bicycle. It was my elder brother’s red colored bicycle. Its color always fascinated me. One day I requested him to allow me to take its ride. First he had a hitch to allow me as he was worried of three things,

•         What if I fell down and get hurt?
•       What if I get hurt and blame goes to him? (For kids this is the most critical moment to face the parentsJ…forget about the wounds!)
•         What if his bicycle gets damage?

But later when I repeatedly requested him, he agreed with barter of some portion of my pocket money and we planned that on next weekend we would go to nearby ground where he will help me to learn riding bicycle.

The D-day came and my elder brother gave me a few instructions such as, how to make balance on bicycle, how to apply brakes, …etc. He kept running behind the bicycle and hold it to prevent me falling down and help me keeping balance while I was riding and after a few such attempts, I learned balancing bicycle!

No lengthy procedures, no lot of rules (I am not referring the traffic rules), no instruction-booklets. It was simple. My brother was my guide, a few rules of cycling as balancing, applying brakes, driving on right side of the ground (road). That’s it!

Why I mentioned it here? Reason is – Practising Scrum is same as riding a bike. No lengthy procedures, no lot of rules, no heavy documentation. If you will keep on planning, you are only going to delay learning Scrum. You need to put Scrum in practice.

The only things needed are:

• A determination for adapting scrum
• Understanding a very few ceremonies (Sprint planning, Backlog refinement, Daily Scrum, Sprint review, Scrum Retrospective)
• Yes, there is a need of one scrum coach during initial weeks and voila! You are scrummified, your team is scrummified.

So what you are waiting for? Go get scrummified.