My real story about the Scrum and Rugby connection
In 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka wrote the seminal Harvard Business Review article called “The New New Product Development Game”, which described a new approach to product development and coined the term “Scrum”.
“The traditional sequential or “relay race” approach to product development […] may conflict with the goals of maximum speed and flexibility. Instead, a holistic or “rugby” approach — where a team tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth — may better serve today’s competitive requirements.”
“Like a rugby team, the core project members […] stay intact from beginning to end and are responsible for combining all of the phases.”
The visionary ideas expressed in the article along with the parallels between Scrum and Rugby inspired a great number of software professionals and created the path for the first Scrum implementation by Jeff Sutherland in 1993.
About the same year, in Bucharest, Romania, during the darkest period of the communist regime, a teenage boy persuaded his father to start playing football. The father knew a coach, took his boy to the training field and asked the coach to let him play as a trial. But, the boy was overweight and the coach said it’s better to try next door to the rugby team. The chubby kid was disappointed but his father told him it is even better because Rugby “is the gentlemen’s sport”. And he will have the possibility to learn and live by the values promoted in Rugby. Mom was totally against it because she didn’t understand the game and she didn’t want to see her boy beaten and bruised.
However, the curiosity sparked and so I started learning about Rugby and how it was different from football. I read the history, of how it emerged from football grace to William Webb Ellis, who broke the rules in 1823! Wow, almost 200 years ago!
Later, I started to better understand Rugby, the rules of the game and why my father told me it was a gentlemen’s sport. I learned about what “Scrum” is, how the team moves forward as a unit, how they respect each other and so many other things. The complicated game began to be easier for me, as I learned and understood its rules. Romania was pretty good, and played all the Rugby World Cups, despite the insignificant number of players and financial constraints. I was impressed by the great teams, the force they showed on the pitch, the teamwork, and how they moved forward. Also, how they adapted to each team strategy, how they learned to respond, how the rules were bent and how they defied the unfriendly environments.
Scrolling forward years, like in the “Click” movie, in 2011 I first heard about the Scrum framework and, together with some colleagues, we had training. We loved the training and decided to create a Scrum team and implement what we learned. The Cargo Cult stroke and we did Scrum but we understood only a few things 🙂 I didn’t see any connection between Scrum and Rugby and continued to work in the traditional way, the “relay race”.
Another click on the remote control and about 6 years ago I started to work in an Agile environment. This time, my curiosity kicked in heavily and I decided to understand more about it. And I started an amazing journey, and I tried to find out the Scrum roots. Lucky me, I have a hobby: I like history 🙂
So, I learned about Takeuchi and Nonaka, Sutherland and Schwaber, the Agile Manifesto, and agile values and principles. And I started to practice, read, understand, discuss and learn. I struggled and I was frustrated, going to different stances of a Scrum Master. I did all the mistakes and I was lucky enough to have people around me that supported and encouraged me.
Step by step I was able to understand why my father told me that Rugby is a gentlemen’s sport. Because a gentleman’s values are the same as Scrum’s values: respect, courage, commitment, focus and openness. Watch a Rugby game and you can spot all those values and you can get a glimpse of how the Scrum team should behave. And, even if the rules of the game are simple, living the values is hard. And it makes the difference between a great team (Rugby or Scrum) and the rest.
The Dodo Birds team is finishing the first month of the Road to Mastery journey by Serious Scrum. I am happy and proud to be part of it and to be guided by Sjoerd Nijland and Matt DiBerardino. I am also lucky to have a great team with me and fellow trailblazers who help me develop my Scrum understanding and skills. Today, in particular, was great, I had the opportunity to be coached, to play the coach role and to be an observer during our meetings and I feel awesome. Thanks, Sjoerd, Voytek and Fatimah!
Once more the main connection between Rugby and Scrum was revealed to me: it is about sharing the same values expressed by individuals’ behaviour.
Let’s keep moving the Scrum downfield!
- Agile
- Retrospectives
- Scrum
- Empiricism
- Scrum master
