Paul Oldfield

It may not be immediately obvious, but Scrum is designed for networks rather than for hierarchies. Scrum is designed on the premise of self-organization. Trying to fit Scrum into a hierarchical organization creates many problems. Allow me to highlight one major aspect here.

Hierarchical organizations have a presumption of authority. Even within a team, levels of seniority matter. People further up the hierarchy are taken to be authoritative, no matter their level of expertise. A far better mindset to have, if self-organization is to work well and, in turn, for the network to work well, is that relationships are peer to peer; all people, if not actually equal, are at least treated as such. They do, of course, have different skills and knowledge and different levels of experience. It is these differences that are suppressed in a hierarchy but that make a network so valuable. What we don’t know, someone else in our network might. Similarly, at some other time, we might have the skills or information that others are looking for. Although the flow of information is bidirectional, there might be more going one way than the other. Don’t focus on this seeming inequality; focus on the value that both sides get out of the link.

This can be a particularly difficult change in mindset for people when they are long accustomed to hierarchical thinking. In hierarchies, the differential in flow is a key to advancement, and people are rewarded for making the difference obvious by being promoted higher in the hierarchy.

For a network to work well, we need to establish a principle of respect. See it as a specific elaboration of that Scrum Value. What works for me is telling myself: “Everybody, absolutely everybody, knows something important that I do not know.” Even if at first you don’t believe me about that, observe—look around you with openness. You will likely find out that there is more truth to it than you assumed. Keep telling yourself so that it becomes ingrained in your approach to the world as a whole—into your personal philosophy. Rather than striving to promote one’s own ideas in competition against everyone else, one now strives to develop the best ideas in collaboration with others. When we start with the idea that everybody knows something important, the dialogue turns toward trying to uncover what it is that they know—to elicit the good ideas, the useful thoughts.

Clearly this is helpful within a self-organizing Development Team, and with a bit of extension, it should help relations between Team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. And yet it is the network outside the team that can add substantial value to the organization. Consider peer-to-peer relationships with other Scrum Teams on the same product but also with teams on other products. Consider relationships with other interest groups within the organization. And possibly most significant, consider relationships with groups outside the organization that have a wealth of knowledge on their various special interests, whether Scrum, software development, business domain, or anything that you need so that you can make your product into a great product and your organization into a great organization.

I want to invite you to think network (even within a hierarchy).