Social Technologies Scrum

Scrum is like communism, it doesn’t work. Myth 5.

Published on 26 October 2023

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

3 minute read

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Scrum and Governance: Navigating the Balance for Agile Success 🚀

Hello, Agile aficionados! Today, let’s debunk a common myth that often surfaces in discussions around Scrum: the belief that Scrum equates to a lack of governance. This misconception suggests that embracing Scrum means throwing all forms of planning, compliance, and organizational standards out the window. However, this view couldn’t be further from the truth. Let’s explore the nuanced relationship between Scrum and governance and how striking the right balance can propel your Agile journey forward. 🌟

The Myth of No Governance in Scrum 🎭

The myth posits that Scrum, with its Agile essence, somehow operates in a vacuum devoid of any governance or regulatory adherence. This interpretation misrepresents Scrum’s flexibility and its capacity to incorporate necessary governance structures, both external and internal, to ensure product success and regulatory compliance.

Understanding Governance Within Scrum 🛠️

While it’s true that Scrum itself embeds minimal governance to maintain agility, it’s essential to recognize that Scrum operates within larger organizational and regulatory ecosystems. Whether you’re developing a healthcare application bound by HIPAA regulations or a banking software adhering to financial compliance standards, governance is not just a choice but a necessity.

External Governance: Regulatory Compliance 📜

Scrum teams, particularly those in highly regulated industries like healthcare or finance, must navigate the waters of external governance. Compliance with laws and regulations like HIPAA is non-negotiable and forms a critical component of the product development lifecycle.

Internal Governance: Organizational Standards and Practices 💡

Beyond external mandates, organizations often have internal governance mechanisms, such as UX guidelines, business rules, and market engagement strategies. These standards ensure consistency, quality, and alignment with business objectives across all products and services.

Embracing “Just Enough Governance” in Scrum ✨

The goal in Scrum, and Agile at large, is to embrace “just enough governance” — enough to meet regulatory requirements and uphold internal standards without stifling agility and innovation. This approach involves critically evaluating existing policies and practices to identify and eliminate those that no longer serve a purpose or hinder value delivery.

Challenges of Over-Governance in Large Organizations 🚀

Large organizations, with their complex hierarchies and legacy systems, often find it challenging to adopt Scrum due to entrenched governance structures. The Royal Bank of Scotland, for instance, grapples with procedural and compliance “baggage” accumulated over centuries, illustrating the daunting task of shifting towards more Agile practices.

The Path to Agile Governance 🌈

For Scrum teams to thrive within these governance constraints, a culture of continuous evaluation and adaptation is crucial. This involves:

Challenging outdated policies: Regularly review and question the relevance and necessity of existing governance structures.
Streamlining compliance: Work collaboratively with compliance and regulatory teams to find Agile-friendly ways to meet necessary standards.
Fostering transparency and communication: Ensure that governance requirements are clearly understood and integrated into the Scrum process in a way that supports, rather than impedes, Agile values.

Conclusion: Governance as a Catalyst for Agile Success 🌟

The narrative that Scrum disregards governance is a myth that oversimplifies the complex interplay between Agile practices and necessary regulatory and organizational standards. By embracing “just enough governance,” Scrum teams can ensure compliance and consistency while retaining the flexibility and responsiveness at the heart of Agile methodologies.

Remember, governance in the context of Scrum isn’t about imposing unnecessary constraints; it’s about empowering teams to deliver value effectively within the bounds of regulatory and organizational expectations. Let’s navigate this balance together, leveraging governance as a foundation for innovation and success in our Agile endeavors.

If you found this discussion on Scrum and governance insightful and wish to explore more about Agile, Scrum, or DevOps practices, I’m here for a chat. Let’s connect over a coffee chat and continue our journey towards Agile excellence together.

One of the myths in Scrum is that we have no governance. This kind of leads on to the bigger myth that just because it’s not in the Scrum Guide, doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to do it. Scrum does absolutely have governance; it has small amounts of governance baked in, right? But in general, you need governance to build your product. So it’s kind of correct to say Scrum doesn’t have a lot of governance. There’s a very small amount of governance built in, but if you want to be successful at building products, if you’re, for example, building products within the healthcare space, then you’re going to have to worry about your ability to support HIPAA, to support the regulatory compliance that comes from the outside. That’s governance imposed on your organization from the outside that you have no control of.

You’re going to have things that your organization does internally. Perhaps your organization has usability guidelines; perhaps they have UX guidelines for how all our products’ UX is going to function so that anybody interacting with our software already knows how it’s going to work because it follows the same rules. Then that’s internal governance that has been applied to your product. You may have business rules; that’s another form of governance. You might have particular ways in which you interact with the market as a business. That’s one of your unique selling points, your unique engagement points with the market, and those ways of working have to be implemented in your systems. That’s internal governance.

Just because Scrum talks about minimising that governance doesn’t mean it’s not there, right? You just have just enough governance to support the business need. It’s when you have way too much governance that you start running into a problem. That’s why in very large organisations, for example, banks, they really struggle to move towards Scrum and agile practices because they’re encumbered by the baggage that they can’t put down. Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK was, I think, the first bank in the world; it’s currently the fifth biggest bank in the world, and they’ve been going for over 200 years. Can you imagine the procedural and compliance baggage that that organisation has? Many of it around for no other reason than nobody’s revisited it in a long time; nobody’s challenged it in a really long time.

How many policies and procedures do you have in your organisation that nobody knows where they came from or what they’re for, or who owns that policy or procedure, or why? It’s just the way we do things here. Those are the things that we want to challenge. We want to challenge anything that gets in the way of inhibiting our ability to deliver value. Those are the things we want to prevent. Those are the policies, practices, and procedures, the governance that we want to reduce to the absolute minimum.

Thanks for watching the video. If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else agile, Scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

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