Self-organization: The secret sauce for improving your Scrum Teams

Here is a video of Jeff Sutherland speaking at the Googleplex in NYC a few years ago. It seems very relevant still.

A couple of things to emphasize:

1. If you are not enjoying the “Where the Hell is Matt?” video at first, bear with it. I think you’ll enjoy Jeff’s explanation.
2. One of the hardest, and at the same time easiest things about Scrum is self-organization. Maybe somewhat like love, that way. Anyway: I do think self-organization is very, very important for doing Scrum well.
3. You will see at the end that I asked a question. How much better could the team become? And was there any end to fixing the impediments? I think you will enjoy Jeff’s answer.

Note: I was working with Dr. Sutherland on a course that week, so I knew how he would respond. It was for me kind of a leading question. I will also take some small credit, in having organized this talk (that is, getting the folks at Google to have us, etc., etc.). Thanks to Johnathan Lucky for reminding me of this video.

To give you my summary, via a Shakespeare quote: “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.”

Enjoy.

 

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