6 Scrum Project Management Pitfalls You Should Avoid

Running your own team can be quite challenging, especially if you’re new to this field of work. Scrum project management offers project managers a methodology which helps them manage their projects with more agility and ease.

In order to be able to implement these rules to your everyday working life, you will need to know enough about it so you are able to avoid some common mistakes. Here are some pitfalls you should know about and avoid in order to make the most out of your management.

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1. Not following the principles correctly

The way that scrum management works is through presenting you with certain principles you can implement in your project management strategy in order to achieve agility. This agility can mainly be achieved through using some short development cycles which are called “sprints” and can help you continue to improve not only your strategy but also your products or services.

There are a few different principles you can follow in order to make this a reality for your team. Most teams will usually start with holding more frequent, face-to-face meetings in order to make sure that they are all working on one common goal for the final project.

Along with that, a principle that always helps with the production of a product or service is putting the customers first and working towards their satisfaction. The more every member of your team is working on achieving the highest quality results, the bigger the success of the final product will be.

 

There are quite a few principles like these which will help a team achieve their desired results. Your goal should be to introduce them to your team and proceed to work collectively in order to implement them correctly.

2. Expecting a transformation to agility overnight

While scrum management promises to help with increasing the agility of your team and allowing you to deal with certain issues more effectively, it is not a process which can happen overnight. Scrum project management will present you with guidance when followed diligently will lead to consistent project success.

Just like anything else, change isn’t going to happen overnight and you will need to be able to stick to your new principles in order to see a change. Becoming agile inmanaging your projects will require you to make mistakes and the only way for you to succeed is to be consistent.

3. Not solving underlying issues in advance

Agile project management can greatly benefit your team and their ability to work under strict deadlines. In order for your scrum management implementations to actually work though, you will need to be certain that you have solved every other issue between your team members first.

Establishing trust and good communication between you and your employees will help you all work better together and help one another adjust to the new changes you are trying to bring.

A culture change will help set the right ground for agile management tactics to work successfully.

So you need to start with working on the relationship between your employees long before you start teaching them about their new working routine.

4. Trying to lead your scrum team like a regular project manager

A common project manager who isn’t aware of the scrum principles would try to maintain an authority figure which will lead the team by solving every problem that arises and giving definite answers and commands to their team members.

The scrum project management principles call for a self-organizing team where the team leader is the binding agent to this whole situation.

Instead of trying to assign projects and tell your team exactly what to do each step of the way, you should focus on establishing good communication and trust by allowing your team to make mistakes and learn by them.

It might be difficult to watch your team fail when you already know the answer to a problem. Experience will show you exactly how to guide your team’s way of thinking so that they think of the solutions in advance and enhance their problem-solving skills by working on self-organizing and collaboration.

These steps will allow your team to stop depending on you and to become productive by finding new and sufficient ways to deal with everyday problems. Your goals should be to guide them towards success rather than plan out every step of the way for them.

Agility will help you teach them how to come up with solutions and plans to improve your course of action as you go and teaching your team how to do that will be your best plan for success.

5. Not being involved enough in their actions

Apart from driving your team to achieve certain results, there is another similar mistake you can make when managing a scrum team and that is to not be involved enough in the decisions they make. While offering them the answers to every problem can be a bad tactic which will cause them to have no free will over their decision making, you should not seem distant and uninterested in their activities.

Whether you are the product owner or in charge of the whole production process, you are bound to have many different responsibilities which will not always involve your team.

Even if that is the case, you should make sure that you always show your commitment to your team by regularly holding meetings and working together with them whenever they need your guidance.

In order to make sure that a product is being developed correctly, you will need to be involved in both the production line and the preparation and improvement of the idea.

By giving constant feedback to your team and guiding them on how they should or could improve their actions, you will all be able to achieve your goals collectively and successfully.

6. Delaying team meetings after every sprint

As mentioned earlier, the basis of scrum project management is holding regular “sprints” which essentially have certain pre-planned set of tasks & amount of time which a team has to complete for successful sprint closure.

This tactic helps get a lot of work done in a short amount of time and aids collaboration and goal-achievement through following such a plan successfully.

One of the things that make these sprints successful is holding regular meetings after each sprint your team completes. Since the sprints should be regular for maintaining a team’s agility, so should the meetings be.

It is a big mistake for you to get your team to hold a few sprints every now and then without establishing a certain plan and continuity between meetings and sprints.

While adjustments can be made with an agile project management plan, you should make sure to keep a consistent schedule between sprints and meetings.

After every sprint you have pre-planned, you should also make sure to schedule a team meeting where everyone will be able to report their progress and get feedback from their coworkers in order to be able to improve their strategy and be more productive for the next sprint.

 

These meetings are known as sprint retrospective.

Delaying the meetings will cause you to lose track of your goals and it won’t help in staying consistent with your plan. Your team should know that adjustments can be made, but they should also always make time to meet and discuss their progress a day or two after each sprint.

Making scrum management work to your advantage

Scrum management principles might be a little hard to implement if you are just starting out on learning about them and implementing them within your team. The best thing you can do in order to make sure you are successful is to pay attention to your team’s needs and guide them correctly so they are able to grow through this new practice and achieve their goals with the help of one another.

Agile management will definitely not happen overnight, but you should be persistent and stick to following the principles it represents. Hard work and collaboration with your team will pay off and there is nothing more satisfying than knowing you are able to improve your product easily and reach every goal you set for your team and your business.