Lots of teams that I work with generally follow the best practices of a Scrum stand up meeting. However, as time goes by team tend to fall into the slippery slope of just reporting what they have accomplished the previous or the current day and completely ignore the next actionable & impediments. This happens more when the team/scrum master is not very strict about the process. In this article, we will see the reasons why this is important and the benefits of the same.

Life without goals

Before we delve deep into practices of Scrum method, we will talk about few general principles how our subconscious works. As per the basic behavioral psychology, there are three parts of the self-concept.

a) Self-Ideal – Goals, aspirations, dreams etc.

b) Self Image – impression about self-based on previous experiences.

c) Self Esteem – Emotional component of how much we like ourselves.

When someone sets goals and achieves them, the self-image corrects and the self-esteem improves. And they start setting bigger goals and continues to go on an upward spiral.

How Psychology relates to Scrum

Whenever a team member talks about “What they will do ” before the next meeting, they are indirectly setting a time-bound goal for themselves. When they come and report the achievement of the same the next day, the self-image and the self-esteem goes up. This will bring more success as the time goes by.

The Sprint is systematically designed methodology using the basic psychology of commit and achieve cycle.

Let’s do an experiment. If you are part of an Agile team, state your goal for the day loudly to your team during the stand-up meeting. You would have that in your back of your mind entire day. At the end the of day, if you accomplish what you stated, you will have an amazing sense of accomplishment. Otherwise, you feel that you have not done enough. This comes to most members as long as they care about the company and their career. All you have to do is take that seriously and you would find yourself growing much faster than your peers.

I have personally asked this to many people and every time I had the same result. Isn’t it amazing? How simple it is to grow in an Agile team. Isn’t it?

So Next time you are in a stand-up meeting, would you talk about “what you are going to do “?

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