Happy New Year!  No doubt many have resolutions on their mind as we head into 2015.  This time of year has many people resolving to make changes, break habits, and to adopt new healthier habits.

So what does any of this have to do with Agile or Scrum?  The Scrum Alliance believes in transforming the world of work.  We have only to look to dictionary.com to see that transform means to change in form, appearance, or structure; metamorphose.

That’s right.  Scrum and other Agile methods mean changing the way we do work.  These approaches involve focusing on people and delivering business value faster rather than dogmatically following a process or discouraging interactions by emphasizing documents.  They mean placing less emphasis on individualized tasks and roles and working together as a team to accomplish a common goal.  These different ways of doing work adapt to change rather than marching to a plan that is no longer relevant.

Why do so many organizations think that Agile and Scrum just mean using some different vocabulary terms but not really changing anything about the way they do work?  Is it like New Year’s resolutions that are forgotten a few months into the year because old habits die hard?  Or is it a lack of education about what these new ways of doing work really involved?

At Collaborative Leadership Team we wish you a Happy New Year and hope that whatever you commit to in the New Year is achieved!  If one of those commitments is to begin doing work in a different way, join us for our next Certified ScrumMaster Workshop:  click here to view our upcoming classes and register for our next CSM or CSPO course.