A lack of structure in day-to-day tasks is a major obstacle to running a successful business.
A solid structure is even more essential if you have a team you need to keep an eye on or scale a company.
Scrum workflows provide such a receptive structure that helps you focus on the important stuff.
What is Scrum Workflow?
The scrum workflow is a team of tools and processes that helps teams work together, stay aligned, and achieve project goals. By implementing team roles, project tools, and meeting rules, the agile scrum workflow establishes a structure for a team so that the project runs smoothly and the steps are known to all team members.
Scrum vs. Agile
Some people consider scrum and agile to be different. But this difference is more descriptive than fundamental. The main point behind the agile scrum workflow is you get a ready tool – a framework that solidifies roles and tasks in time so that you can focus on building strategy and growing revenues. Scrum is a subset of tools that fall under the broader agile project management methodology.
Scrum Agile Workflow
Think of the scrum agile workflow process as a machine that builds and inspects itself. You have given the manual and the instructions. The team engine assembles independently, executes tasks, and mends itself by improving through the process.
Jira software, for example, lets you create a Jira scrum workflow you can use for product development, project management, and software bug and issue tracking.
Scrum in Agile Virtual Teams
The seed for the agile scrum process may have been planted in software development. But you can replicate the capabilities of the scrum workflow and reiterate tasks in intervals to all projects.
Understanding the key characteristics of the scrum workflows is key to develop a structure for your business that won’t fail you while the environment around you changes.
With the agile scrum workflow, you can run a business even when people suddenly leave, projects fail, new clients surge, and your workload is heavier than ever. The video below will give you more information about what aspects of scrum are most important and how you can apply them to virtual teams.
Scrum Workflow Rewards for Virtual Teams
What makes scrum so unique in the virtual environment?
1. Clarity
The team focuses on accomplishing goals in clear roles, step-by-step processes, and timeboxed sprints. So clarity of roles is an important aspect of scrum workflow.
First, you need to assign scrum roles and responsibilities.
Second, you ask team members for deliverables (scrum backlog) ownership to ensure that clarity is agreed upon, not only assumed.
When you remove role ambiguity, you get clear results because everyone knows what they are doing at any given moment. Such an approach leaves more time for you to manage instead of doing the work yourself.
2. Visibility
When the scrum process is “put on paper” (or set up in a project management tool), you get a scrum workflow diagram. The diagram is also known as the scrum workflow template or scrum workflow framework.
The clarity of the scrum workflow diagram puts everyone on the same page and adjusts the speed of execution of product requirements against project goals and team skills. Because deliverables are visible across the team, individual accomplishments are in sync with team goals.
3. Accountability
Accountability is a logical consequence of role clarity and visibility. Holding each organizational role – the Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team Lead, and Project Manager – accountable for their part of the scrim workflow success, you eliminate process inconsistencies and ensure the iterations run as planned.
When you adjust the scrum process to any other project, let’s say marketing development, you need to be equally dedicated to role clarity, regardless of what you call those roles and the responsibilities they include.
Working with virtual teams in a virtual setup provides even greater accountability because you can see everything on the screen, often in real-time.
4. Cost-effectiveness
Thinking that working in scrum prints with iterations is unsustainable budget-wise is counterintuitive.
Many mistakes in project planning and identifying product requirements happen because the budget is fixed. Such fixation doesn’t allow for working with changes in circumstances, technologies, and team roles.
Iterations and sprints defined as “to-do”, “in progress” and “done” enable elastic project management, which is a synonym for running a business that can scale in the long term.
5. Adaptability
Scrum is about ensuring that you complete deliverables that have the most business value first. When you work in this way, you can quickly define what is worth your time and resources and maximize your productivity in that area.
The scrum feedback loop is an essential tool for directing your efforts to the area with maximum value.
6. Participation
Scrum agile workflow is participatory because team members can share progress periodically in quick iterations.
There are many ways you can use the scrum workflow, including “ready, set, and go” software tools that help you copy or improvise the scrum process to the dot.
No project is the same. When the project strays away from software development, the manager’s task is to align the scrum workflow framework with the business strategy and drive goals forward.
What if?
- The scrum setup varies because you run several different projects.
- Scrum workflow diagrams are too confusing or time-consuming.
- Scrum roles and responsibilities are unclear.
- The typical scrum diagram does not work for your particular project.
- You have no idea where to find talented, reliable people to assign scrum roles.
We can help you clarify what bits of your business deliver the most value so that you create new scrum workflows with ease and establish a system you can use over and over again for every new project.
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