Agile project management is essential in ensuring flexibility and responsiveness to changes that may appear when working in teams. A practical method to increase team productivity and collaboration is to implement Scrum principles within your team. Hence, in this article, we will be introducing how you can do so with the help of ScrumGenius.
What are Scrum principles?
Scrum principles are the base of the Scrum agile methodology framework. Incorporating these principles within scrum teams and others helps to improve transparency and adaptation in project management.
Scrum teams rely heavily on the cooperation among cross-functional members involved in project planning and management. This methodology applies to projects consisting of approximately 10 members and is characterized by short cycles referenced to the concept of "sprinting".
What are the 6 key Scrum principles?
#1. Empirical process control:
Making decisions based on hard evidence and observations, not just because it's tradition or the usual way things have always been done.
#2. Self-organization:
Teams need to place the importance of individuality and interaction over processes and tools. Each member matters as an individual, and if someone is struggling, it'll affect the entire organization.
#3. Collaboration:
Teams need to understand how to work with others and maintain open communication with stakeholders and members outside of your team.
#4. Value-based prioritization:
Your scrum team prioritizes tasks are based on their value and importance for the end-users. The company can then determine the order in which these tasks need to be completed.
#5. Timeboxing:
Allocating and scheduling time for certain activities. The project manager or leader assigns tasks during sprint planning, monitors project completion, discusses project progress at daily meetings, and evaluates results during sprint reviews.
#6. Iterative development:
Project requirements in Scrum are regularly subjected to change and revision. Hence, under this framework, software development activities need to be revisited and continuously reworked to create the best product.
How Do Scrum Principles Benefit Your Team?
Whatever the type of project, scrum principles are designed to help teams work efficiently on complex projects and products with frequently changing requirements. Adoption of this framework facilitates clear communication, transparency, and better teamwork. This leads to successful projects done at record time.
Here's how you can apply the Scrum principles to your project team with ScrumGenius:
#1. Reduce communication overheads.
Under the Scrum framework, face-to-face and daily scrum meetings are encouraged for efficiency, effectiveness and to keep the team continuously motivated. This is where ScrumGenius starts coming into play.
ScrumGenius is a standup app for remote teams that aims to automate the laborious process of organizing and doing standup meetings, especially when they're held async. Some team meetings are unusually long when there are tons of opinion exchanges and can be shortened with ScrumGenius.
You can automatically send daily standup, daily reports, sprint retrospectives, and other similar reports through chat for your team members to complete.
New Zealand's Regional Government has found that ScrumGenius enabled them to cut meeting times by 300% while encouraging more team engagement. It also contributed to less email clutter and better internal communication, allowing teams to increase productivity and communicate more efficiently.
#2. Encourage minimal cost and error.
Keeping each member in the team on the same page could be difficult with multiple platforms to update. ScrumGenius' automated email reports and keyword insights help to eliminate this problem.
With the automated email reports, it helps to reduce inbox clutter, resulting in fewer emails to track. A report summary email will also be sent out after your standup sessions via email, improving your internal communication efficiency.
Moreover, members will be kept updated on what happened in previous sessions through the standardized updates. Additionally, information can be pulled out easily from the database with ScrumGenius' powerful filters and keyword search features.
#3. Facilitates better cross-functional collaboration
To inculcate motivation among team members and a work-friendly environment, teams need to stay meaningfully connected. This can be done through an async connection and private reports through ScrumGenius, serving as a platform for honest feedback from the management.
Additionally, collaborations can also be optimized through the reduced downtime brought about by automation.
#4. Better time management within teams
The concept of time blocking is like the Pomodoro technique, where you work hard for a certain period and reward yourself with a short break. Time blocking is essential because we are all natural-born procrastinators. If left to our own devices, our tasks start piling up. Time blocking forces members to finish assigned tasks on time.
ScrumGenius has a unique in-built goal and blocker trainer to measure project velocity and productivity blockers. This provides the overseer with a glance as to whether the team is achieving daily goals regularly or if there are recurring obstacles impeding progress.
#5. Promotion of individuality
This corresponds to the principle of value-based prioritization, where tasks are ranked based on relevance and completed in order.
A platform where your team can seamlessly check-in and share what they are doing daily is essential. This is how ScrumGenius can help by bringing your team together. Check-ins can be done via chat on Microsoft Teams or Slack, which is very convenient. Alternatively, check-in notifications can also be sent via email.
As project managers can easily track updates within the dashboard and see potential blockers, they can help specific members experiencing project completion issues.
#6. Encourages collaborative decision-making.
Various studies have proven that when businesses involve employees in the decision-making process, the outcomes are generally much better. With the Scrum framework's self-managing structure, teams can make decisions together rather than rely on the management.
Members need to decide how they should collaboratively should settle internal issues. As not everyone will agree to everything, members need to be willing to negotiate and compromise. With ScrumGenius' data visualization features, project members can quantify progress.
Project members can view critical information on common issues, engagement rates, and the team's progress at a glance to streamline team workflow.
Stop wasting resources on unproductive meetings and focus on getting things done with ScrumGenius!
ScrumGenius is a standup app that has helped many remote teams cut down meeting times by 300% while increasing team engagement rates with Microsoft Teams. Previously, Scrum reports from remote teams were difficult to obtain with time zone differences. Now, with ScrumGenius, communication has never been easier!
Shorter but more meaningful meanings can be conducted, leading to happier teams. Meetings are also more efficient due to the data-led standups, allowing teams to focus on solving blockers in meetings. Furthermore, the digitization of standup notes and the ability to make notes private eliminates the need for verbal catch-ups.
Check out our free trial and boost the accountability and productivity of teams with ScrumGenius today.