Am I a purist? Judge me

A purist is an individual who adheres strictly to a particular set of principles, beliefs, or standards, often with a strong emphasis on maintaining purity or authenticity in a specific context. The term is commonly used in various fields, such as art, literature, music, and lifestyle choices. A purist is an individual who adheres strictly to a particular set of principles, beliefs, or standards, often with a strong emphasis on maintaining purity or authenticity in a specific context.

I have been called a Scrum purist many times and am throwing it out to the community for comment. Well, here are my principles, beliefs and standards. You be the judge.

Planning – I believe planning is essential in business and life, but I don’t expect plans to be perfect. I also strongly believe in the right level of planning, where too much has a diminishing return on value and too little invites challenges. Thus, balance in planning is essential.  

Goals – I believe in setting goals and working towards them. Goals provide purpose and focus; without them, I find myself jumping around, trying to do too many things. What I don’t like is having tons of goals all in progress simultaneously. It confuses me as to which one I should focus on, and then I end up bouncing around, being busy and getting nowhere.

Stepping out of the game – I often get bogged down in the details, becoming too engrossed or distracted. Stopping and stepping out of the game for a bit helps me look at things objectively, re-anchor purpose, and reestablish focus.

Routines and regular cadences – I like routines and regular cadences because I don’t have to spend energy on planning and organising. It becomes as easy as getting my morning coffee. However, I also appreciate the fact that it prompts me to step out of the game regularly, regardless of my progress.

Optimising meetings – I dislike spending more time in meetings and hardly any time to do the work. I see the need for meetings but prefer delivering value at my desk rather than talking about it for days.

Quality – Quality is crucial. I have been on many stressful projects with poor quality, constantly fixing bugs, and dealing with production environments breaking. I believe in taking a professional stance on quality. It's not about doing too little, putting everyone at risk, stressing everyone out, and making everyone look like fools. It's about achieving the appropriate level of quality without overengineering.

Continuous Improvement - Software development as a market is continually changing, evolving, and requires constant learning. Most things I build are on new bleeding-edge technologies and on products that have not been done before. There is a lot of discovery that has to happen along the way.

Accountability - I believe in people taking responsibility, ownership of their skill domain, and accountability. Not blame accountability, as that is bullying, but more accountability and ownership with an "I’ve got this, leave it with me, and it will be done" kind of way.

Pragmatism - I believe in pragmatism and dealing with day-to-day real-world challenges that arise and what is really going on.  After all, this is the imperfect real world, where things often don’t go according to plan, and trade-offs need to be made.

People First - We have tools, processes, practices, procedures, and systems, but they mean nothing without people. It is people who make things happen. People are most important, especially where they have built trust, collaborated, and worked together as professionals, and yes, bring in a bit of fun too.

Self-Management - I detest being micro-managed; I prefer negotiating a goal and running with it. Don’t ask me every nanosecond to give you a status report because I own it and run with it. If I run into challenges, I will pull you into the loop.

No Blame, just learning - I am human and not a machine, thus I do make mistakes, say the wrong things, and reveal my emotions. If I fail, I don’t want you to blame me; instead, I want you to help me improve so I don’t fall into the same trap again. It's more about improving while working in an environment that shows passion, commitment, learning, and respect. No blame, ownership, and a commitment to improvement.

Same Team - I believe as a business, we are not silos fighting against each other; we are all on the same team playing different positions. When we focus on engaging our customers and building relationships with them, we get their business. I don’t see competitors as a problem because they are stuck in the old world full of bureaucratic dysfunction. Thus, focusing on the customer and value to the customer makes us the leaders and them the followers, no competition!

Value – I believe in always focusing on the biggest pain and/or value of work.  Eliminate the waste and deliver quickly.

Feedback – I believe in feedback on ways of working, products and stakeholders. It's about testing assumptions, learning, and figuring out what works. One cannot innovate and get it right the first time; that is silly. Experiment, Try, Get Feedback, Fix and/or improve. All feedback must be made visible in a professional manner.

Informed Decisions - I don't believe in going from problem to solution in one go. Instead, I like gathering the facts, and data and getting to the root causes. I like exploring different options and then making informed decisions to address it.

Risk – I do like taking risks and pushing boundaries, but I don’t want catastrophic failures.  Making changes to ways of working or products will introduce risk, but that risk can be limited to small but continuous changes.  If things go wrong, they can easily be corrected.

Team working on the same goal - I enjoy working close to others where there is a lot of chatter about the current work, like brainstorming, but it is daily. Everyone is busy working together, getting one thing done. When there are challenges, we talk about them on the spot, and it does not interrupt the flow of work because we are all working on the same thing. I don’t like being in teams where everyone is working on something completely different, and we are called a “team”.

Focus - I believe in focus, getting one goal done at a time. Not running 5 concurrent projects and context switching many times a day. Creating a list of things to do and ordering it based on value is important.

Values – I know that values are important, and courage, focus, commitment, openness, and respect are good professional values to have.

Product Strategy Leadership - These days, building complex problems requires so many different skills across the business. Although we need to collaborate and have shared understandings, each one of us needs to bring focus and take ownership of something. It's not about doing it in a silo, but more about running with it and making sure it happens. Someone needs to ensure the product strategy, vision, and value are there. Someone needs to focus on building the product to the right quality levels in many technical specialties but working together as a group. Someone needs to clear the road of all the challenges so others can work productively because, in the real world, there are always challenges.

But the most important one is

Improvement - All of the above are important to me. But I may not be perfect at it. I believe in constantly seeking better ways. My market changes far too quickly, and if I am not growing and changing, I am falling behind and getting into a rut. This allows me to innovate, bring in newer ideas, and eliminate outdated ways. It allows me to fix, refine and improve all of the above. How I do it will change, but my principles and beliefs don't.

Am I a purist?

This is what Scrum and the Scrum framework are about. At a much deeper level, this is all about principles. If you know me, you will see how often I criticise mechanical Scrum because that is execution without principle and purpose. If you want to call me a purist for doing this, go ahead because that is the best compliment you can give me.

Can you spot the Scrum events, artefacts, roles and commitments, values and empiricism?
Are you a purist?