SCRUM + Motivation

One of the main ideas of SCRUM is Self-Organized Team. Sounds really great! You don't need any Team Lead, who will manage tasks for developers and testers - team estimate, commit, implement. But, if you are trying to setup SCRUM in your company you should understand - SCRUM without Motivation is not working at all.

If your team is not motivated you will get nothing at the end of the Sprint. Even if they will work very hard whole month. What is the reason - team is not motivated, and is not interested in success of the Project, they are not going to meet a goal of the Sprint, they are just working. So, first of all - check if everything is O in your team with motivation. Team should be really concentrated to meet the Goal.

Let's imagine that you are not managing tasks for team members anymore, and every person is able to start working on any task she/he likes. If your team is not concentrated - each developer and tester will try to take more interesting and probably easy tasks. What will you get in one week - a lot of closed, small, and not related to each other tasks. In terms of system - nothing. What will you send to your testers - nothing, what will you deliver to your customers for review - also nothing.

If team is motivated, they will check every time - which tasks is most important for today, "what should I do to help team to meet the goal of the Sprint".

Scrum is working only for very good motivated teams.

ScrumAlliance.org

Great!!!

I was registered on scrumalliance.org. Find my Profile - http://www.scrumalliance.org/profiles/2092-vladimir-litoshenko

Visit www.scrumalliance.org for more information about SCRUM and certification.

Marketing job

I was in St.Pete Russia in Metro. There were two guys who were selling some stuff in the train and on each station they were going to another car. One of these guys was selling maps and pensils. Good and usefull maps and not bad pensils. So there were potential buyers in the train, but when he was describing his article of trade noone will be able to hear him and everything what he was talking about was boring and not interesting at all. There were no smile on his face. So, he hasn't sold anything.
Second guy was selling real stuff - something like balloons with a sound. He was talking loud enough so everyone will be able to hear him. He has shown how this balloon works - he has inflated one of them and let them off - balloon was flighing with a funny sound throw whole car. Everyone seen that, and he has sold 5 or 10 such balloons in 2 minutes.

So - good marketing and presentation are working really well