Uses of Scrum – Beyond Software

Scrum originated in the early 1990s in software development, where most of the work was complex. Over the last ten years, its use has expanded to many other complex work types.

Here are some examples from my experience where Scrum is used in interesting ways beyond the software world.

Real Hospital Português – Recife, Brazil

In 2016, I travelled to Recife in Brazil, which was at the epicentre of the Zika virus outbreak. The COO of Real Hospital Português had invited me to train 60 of the staff at the hospital in Scrum.

The hospital was in crisis. Recife was at the centre of the Zika outbreak. The number of people visiting the Accident and Emergency (A&E) department had doubled quickly, and they could not cope with this rapidly increased demand.

Like many hospitals, a traditional and bureaucratic management structure made decisions slowly. Even small, low-risk changes would typically take over a year. This delay was no longer acceptable in the crisis they found themselves in due to the Zika virus.

The COO assembled a cross-functional team to attend the Scrum training. It included a diverse group ranging from the Chief Surgeon, the Cleaning Manager, the Finance Director, a Junior Nurse, and many others.

After the training, the COO assumed the Product Owner accountability and assembled a Scrum Team that included cross-functional people from across the hospital. The vision set by the Product Owner was to make changes 10x faster than usual to allow them to better cope with the Zika crisis.

In the first 2-week Sprint, they increased the capacity of the A&E department by 50%. The changes made were simple but would have been impossible without an empirical approach and increased trust and focus on the immediate delivery of value in the form of more patients treated successfully in less time.

Pharmaceuticals

A significant trend through 2020 in the UK and Europe was the desire of large Pharmaceutical companies to become more Agile, using Scrum. This included companies such as Roche, GSK and Novartis, who invested heavily in training their people to help them better manage their complex work.

I trained people across these organisations with various skills and interests, including executive leadership teams, HR, finance, sales, marketing, project management, logistics, facilities, drug development & testing.

The timing of this was fortuitous, with the arrival of Coronavirus/COVID-19 in 2020. The greater Agility these organisations have achieved so far will enable them to deliver vaccines and testing solutions faster than may otherwise have been possible.

Business Agility

The trend that the big Pharma companies were following is part of the global movement for organisations to seek greater ability or to become “Agile”.

The world is becoming an ever more complex place. The change affects industries that have remained relatively static for much of their history. Technology is changing; customer demand is changing. Unexpected and volatile events are becoming the norm. The very nature of societies and economies is shifting before our eyes. The level of change and uncertainty around us is at an unprecedented level. Predicting what will happen next is impossible.

Organisations have to adapt to this changing landscape to survive. As a result, they are recognising the need to work in a more Agile way that allows them to keep the maximum number of options open and adapt and change direction when needed with the lowest possible risk.

Agility used to be an I.T. and software thing. Now, it is a business thing, and only those organisations who achieve it will survive in the long term.

Scrum is the most popular approach to becoming more Agile. Scrum can help with all modern business problems.