A few years ago I attended the Franklin Covey presentation on the 4 disciplines of execution and afterwords I read their book on the same topic. The objective of these disciplines is to allow an organization to build a road-map to achieve business critical goals by teaching mangers how to institutionalize goal clarity and an execution process throughout the team.
As a seasoned professional Scrum Master, I couldn’t help but recognize the similarities between their 4 disciplines and the basic tenets of Scrum. Because I hold Franklin Covey in high regard, it reinforced to me that Scrum is truly a successful approach to achieving goals in the face of complexity and can be implemented on varying scales and in many different situations, not just the software development world that I am used to.
Many of you will probably also see the correlation immediately when reading the individual disciplines, but I’ll give my brief explanation for those that are less familiar with Scrum. Here they are:
- Focus on the Wildly Important
- Act on Lead Measures
- Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
- Create a Cadence of Accountability
According to Franklin Covey, these disciplines were designed to address several problems within an organization.
First they say managers and work teams aren’t aware of the goal. According to their research, an astonishingly low 15 percent of employees are aware of the company’s most important goals, either because there are none or there are too many. As we know, in Scrum the goal is set by the team for each sprint based on value set by the Product owner. Everyone is involved in the determination of the goal and in deciding how it will be accomplished.
Secondly they state managers and teams don’t know what activities to perform to achieve the goal. During the Sprint Planning meeting, the Scrum Team comes up with a plan as to exactly which activities are needed to reach their goal and it is formalized in the Sprint Backlog.
Third, their research shows that most workers don’t know what the key measures of success are, and they don’t measure and track the specific behaviors that lead to goal accomplishment. Of course, Scrum promotes transparency and therefore has built in measures to track progress, or “keep score” as they say. The Sprint Backlog is maintained regularly to show what has been done and what needs to be done to reach the Sprint Goal. Additionally, many of us use various charts to track goal progress and display them daily in standup, like burn down charts.
Lastly, they say that most employees are not held accountable for their progress towards achieving the goal. On self-organizing teams in Scrum, we hold each other accountable on a daily basis. Because progress is being tracked, we employ frequent inspection, and we have short, consistent Sprint cycles then issues bubble up immediately and we adapt. The team works together to resolve any impediments that may arise.
So we can clearly see that any team operating within the Scrum framework is already employing the 4 disciplines of execution in a way that solves or eliminates the main challenges they have raised.
- Focus on the Wildly Important: Scrum accomplishes this by maintaining an ordered Product Backlog, with all the most important items, based on present business value, at the top with enough detail to be acted upon
- Act on Lead Measures: The most valuable and important items from the Product Backlog are selected into the Sprint Backlog with a plan on how to get the work done by the end of the Sprint. Of course, the value and importance of backlog items are reviewed at the end of each sprint to ensure the team is always acting on the highest priority items.
- Keep a Compelling Scoreboard: Our Sprint Backlog is updated daily as work is performed and is visible to the entire team. Burn down charts keep score by showing definitive progress towards the goal. If these aren’t compelling enough, add some color or humor to your charts.
- Create a Cadence of Accountability: Scrum does this naturally through short, consistent Sprint cycles and the inspection/adaptation events. Daily Scrum raises impediments and illuminates problem areas, Sprint Review and Retrospective allow the team and stakeholders an opportunity to see what went well and what can be improved upon.
If you’re interested in learning more, they offer several free webinars on the Franklin Covey website