Stijn Decneut

Continuous improvement is an integral part of Scrum. It is explicitly exercised at the Sprint Retrospective, but the ability to generate new ideas and capitalize on them is important at all times.

When it comes to creatively coming up with game-changing ideas and finding intrinsic motivation to execute them, nothing beats the experience that cognitive scientists call “insights,” more commonly known as “a-ha!” or “Eureka!” moments. We then experience a moment of ultimate clarity, connecting dots in a way we never could before. During such moments of insight, we experience high energy, joy, and motivation.

People typically have insights about work when they’re doing anything but working: having a shower, running, going for a walk in the woods (with or without the dog), doing the dishes, and so on.

Let’s build on cognitive neuroscience research to make our Scrum environment more insight-friendly. Although insights seem to appear suddenly and at random, studies have revealed that moments of insight follow predictable processes in the brain and that we can influence the likelihood of having them. We can create optimal conditions for insight moments by being in a relaxed, slightly happy mood; reflecting in meta about the problem; closing our eyes in a quiet place; and not focusing on finding a solution for the problem at hand deliberately.

If that sounds simple but not easy, then consider that we are Homo sapiens sapiens, able to reflect on and direct our thinking. We can make the deliberate choice to think of something pleasant. We can decide to look at ourselves and our problems in a more positive way. This may not make us profoundly happy about our problems in the long term, but it helps a great deal in finding breakthrough ideas with insights. Scrum Teams aware of this can help one another by creating a genuinely positive atmosphere in their team room, throughout their Sprints, and certainly in their Sprint Retrospectives.

Any human endeavor needs slack: time to sit, think, and reflect. Unfortunately, many Scrum adoptions are overly focused on volume—on delivering more—rather than on becoming better at what they do and thus increasing the value they deliver. Scrum Teams should make time available to reflect on their problems and challenges in meta, regularly, by asking questions such as, “How long has this been an issue for us?”, “Where do we see similar patterns?”, and “What would be different if this was no longer an issue?”

Given the importance of a happy mood, a bit of silence, and room for the mind to wander, the impact of the team’s location cannot be overstated. Teams may decide to go for a walk together in a quiet, natural environment or gather in a fun—but quiet—room during the Sprint or for their Sprint Retrospective.

The last condition, letting go, can be especially challenging. It helps to engage in a distracting, cognitively undemanding break activity after an initial conscious attempt at solving a problem, even, and especially, when it was unsuccessful.

Do these conditions guarantee that great insights will emerge? No, but they do increase the likelihood that insights will happen, leading to more creativity, joy, and motivation.