Yeah! I got certified as Scrum Master - What did I learn?

For years, I have been looking into agility, its principles and how they help to create lasting success in teams. We have brought agility into manufacturing, R&D and for sure also in IT teams. Earlier this year, I then decided to jump deep into the certification for Scrum Master. What did I learn?

There is one thing that becomes obvious very quickly: scrum as methodology is not prescriptive. Instead, it contains a series of suggested activities, templates, processes, etc. The key foundation is empiricism! Each team then needs to find out what works best for them - based on a set of principles.

In my projects, I am mostly engaged in leadership development. And while going through the scrum master certification, I understood that the principles are strongly supporting a modern, dynamic leadership approach. Scrum can give us answers to the question: how can we deliver maximum value in complex environments?

Are you curious to bring agility to your organisation? Then let's look at these key principles! Here my take:

• Self-organising team - the pod / scrum team / group of people has a strong autonomy in what deliverables they want to focus on and in the way they are going to collaborate.
• Experiment to learn - in order to deliver, the team takes small steps, one experiment at the time; the focus here is 'learning first'; in each action, we ask ourselves: what can we learn?
• Clarity on creating value - each team member, including the surrounding ecosystem, needs to have a good understanding where we can create value to our customers.

How can you follow these key principles in your organisation? Where do you see the obstacles for agility?

Thank you, Takeshi Yoshida, for pushing me on this path!