Ullizee-Inc | Gunther Verheyen

My life of Scrum started in 2003 when we wrapped our eXtreme Programming approach in Scrum. Throughout my two+ decades of experience, I feel I have seen and experienced much. Anyone interested in more details can check out the complete saga of my life of Scrum that I included in The Scrum Caretaker 14.

What keeps surprising me is the lack of a heuristic, experience-based approach when adopting Scrum, an approach based on the stance of trying to solve problems by finding practical ways of dealing with them, of learning by discovering things for oneself, of learning from past experience rather than over-analyzing and thinking everything should be known upfront.

The fact that Scrum is an open framework makes it apparently easy to get stuck at some academic level with debates over interpretations of the words used in the Scrum Guide or at the level of some mechanistic, lifeless implementation of Scrum. These approaches often cause (a new incarnation of) ‘analysis paralysis’ and keep the industrial paradigm intact rather than deeply transforming an organization’s way of working.

Ultimately, the rules of Scrum serve to create a base structure, a frame, within which people and organizations develop a working process that is specific and appropriate to their time and context. Within these boundaries, people form organized groups around a common problem or challenge without external work plans or instructions being imposed on them (“self-organization”). The process of regularly inspecting the outcome and the how of the work helps them identify the most sensible adaptations (“empiricism”), understanding that what works today might not work tomorrow.

I have always aspired to help people and organizations get unstuck by regaining focus, start moving (their) Scrum downfield and up their game; to firm up their agility by re-imagining their Scrum (as shared in The Scrum Caretaker 14). Understanding the rules of Scrum is no more than a start, yet seems to be the end stage for so many. Moving (your) Scrum downfield requires understanding the rules to play by them to then…look beyond them. As a Scrum Caretaker, I propagate Scrum as more than a ‘process’ by actively nurturing and upholding the values, behaviors, and people-centric aspects that make Scrum more effective. My ambition, ultimately, is to humanize the workplace; thereby acting as an advisor, a connector, a teacher, a writer, or a speaker.

As a ‘teacher’ I facilitate people’s learning process rather than ‘train’ or condition them. Since I started with Scrum in 2003, I have created and delivered a wide diversity of Scrum workshops and classes for diverse audiences and people with different levels of expertise. In 2011 I obtained my license as a Professional Scrum Trainer for Scrum.org from Ken Schwaber (co-creator of Scrum). My business vehicle, Ullizee-Inc, is a member of the Professional Training Network of Scrum.org.