Sjoerd Kranendonk

Scrum is most known as a framework for empirical product delivery and for developing IT products. But it has also been applied to address other complex adaptive problems: in HR, marketing, police work, education (eduScrum), running a company, and so on.

My work as Scrum Master of a police team working on detection and prevention of cybercrime helped me explore how to look at the Increment, a mandatory Scrum artifact, in a non-IT context.

At first, the Increment feels like a tricky concept, given that most people consider it to be a product version. It is what a Development Team in Scrum creates throughout a Sprint. The Scrum Guide, however, leaves sufficient room for the concept to be applied in a non-IT context:

An increment is a body of inspectable, done work that supports empiricism at the end of the Sprint. The increment is a step toward a vision or goal.

It might come as a surprise, but in no way is the Increment described as a software or IT concept. The description is, however, also quite abstract. Ultimately, it boils down to having an output that:

• Can be inspected

• Is assumed to be valuable

• Is in a “Done” state

• Is part of reaching a vision or goal

When translating these characteristics of an Increment to the context of police work, we discovered that there is no need to substantially change our ideas of an Increment.

Detection work

For the aspect of detection work (leading to convicting criminals), we identified that the police teams create outputs in the form of files and descriptions that should be usable by the prosecutor, including being admissible in court. In the process of constructing such evidence, the police teams need to keep sound and systematic logs and descriptions of how the evidence was constructed. As part of this, relevant changes and data need to be input into an IT system. We set the goal for ourselves that at the end of each Sprint, these files should be in a Done state: no registrations remain or are missing that pertain to useful evidence for the case.

The logs and the resulting case files are outputs that help reach the vision of making the world a little more just and safer while creating a deterrent effect through their application in court.

Crime prevention

The output created by police teams in crime prevention are often events or publications that help educate civilians and organizations to be more resilient against cyber criminals. These types of public information must conform to established communication rules and regulations in terms of content, graphics, and language. We want the event or publication—no later than by the end of a Sprint—to be in such a state that, without any further work, it could be used to support prevention activities. It is likely that changes and additions need to be performed in several Sprints to be able to actually release or publish it.

These teams work against the overarching vision of minimizing the impact of cyber criminals. An important tactic is to share and promote means of prevention, thus making the criminals’ job harder.

As we are only at the start of applying Scrum in this context of police work, much is still aspirational. We look forward to discovering improvement opportunities in creating transparency in Scrum through the Increment.