For a while, Christiaan Verwijs and I considered changing the name of the Scrum Team Survey to “Lumos,” inspired by the Harry Potter series.
“Lumos is a charm that creates light by illuminating the tip of the spell caster’s wand. Lumos is used frequently to create light, and it’s helpful when navigating darker landscapes.”
For various reasons, we ended up with Columinity, which still includes the ‘Luminate” part. It touches on the essence of what Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters, and other Agile practitioners should do:
👉 Make the state of Agile transparent by shining light on problems, obstacles, and impediments. But also make successes visible; what’s going well?
Transparency enables inspection, which triggers change and adaptation. However, this only works with complete transparency; otherwise, the inspection will be misleading and could be based on false assumptions.
It’s surprising how many coaches and consultants don’t use a flashlight. They wander through organizations in the dark, trying to figure out what’s happening. 🤷♀️
Tips to get started
✅ Get yourself a professional flashlight. Don’t go cheap; chances are they won’t illuminate what’s going on.
✅ Buy multiple flashlights. This limits dependencies and makes creating full transparency easier.
✅ Make using the flashlight a shared effort. Encourage team members, managers, and stakeholders to do the same. It prevents the coach from becoming the bottleneck, and especially in dark places, it’s comforting to have support.
✅ Coach team members to use their own flashlights. Make this a natural next step after having done it together first.
✅ Share findings. Determine a basecamp and get together frequently to share findings, patterns, and trends.
✅ Shine light on failures AND successes. Don’t only focus on the scary parts; also, go to the places where things are already bright.
Oh, and in case you hadn’t made the connection, Columinity is one of the most professional and scientifically validated “flashlights”! 😃
What other ‘flashlight ‘-related recommendations do you have? 🤔