My talk at Global Scrum Gathering Bengaluru 2016

1. S E L L I N G S C R U M T O
T H E C - S U I T E
Tathagat Varma
http://thoughtleadership.in

2. S C R U M 1 0 1

3. S C R U M D E L I V E R A B L E S
• Daily: Updated task board and burn-down
chart, Code check-ins and CI builds
• Sprint: Potentially Shippable Increment of a
set of stories (subset of product backlog),
Updated Release Burn-down Chart
• Release: Deploy-ready Release

4. S C R U M S O F T D E L I V E R A B L E S
• Values: Openness, Courage, Respect, Focus,
Commitment
• People: Agile mindset, Generalising Specialists
• Teams: Cross-functional, Self-Organising Teams
• Culture: Transparency, Accountability,
Cultivation

5. C - S U I T E 1 0 1

6. C - W H AT ?
• Collectively refers to a corporation’s most important
senior executives
• Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Finance Officer
(CFO), Chief Products Officer (CPO), Chief Technology
Officer (CMO), Chief Sales Officer (CSO), Chief
Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Information Officer
(CIO)…collectively known as the C-Suite
• Chief…something…Officer (CXO)

7. C - S U I T E D E L I V E R A B L E S
• Business as Usual: Execution, Delivery, Operations,
Governance, Marketshare, Profitability, Efficiency,
Predictability, Consistency, Reliability, Scaling Up, Customer
Retention, Talent Management, Policies, Biz Dev, Marketing,
Consolidation, Marketing, Competitive positioning, Kaizen,
…”the 10% thinking”, or the 1-to-n
• New Opportunities: Strategy, Make big bets, Innovation,
Design, New Venture Creation, Revenues, Effectiveness,
Disruption, Starting Out, Customer Acquisition, Culture,
Corp Dev, GTM, Growth, New Product Introduction, Brand
building, Leadership, Kaikaku, … “the 10X thinking”, or the
0-to-1

8. C - S U I T E C H A L L E N G E S

9. T R AV E L W O E S …

10. M - WA L L E T W O E S …

11. E - C O M M E R C E W O E S …

12. W H E R E W I L L Y O U M A K E A D E N T ?

13. S T I L L T H I N K I N G O F E F F I C I E N C Y ?

14. S H O O T O U T…
W H AT S C R U M G I V E S W H AT C - S U I T E N E E D S
Focus On How To Build The
“Product Right”
+Alignment On What Is The
“Right Product”
Exploitation Of The Known
(“10% Thinking”)
+Exploration Of The Unknown
(“10X Thinking”)
Standard Process For Any
Situation (“Lab Process”)
+Tailored Process For Specific
Situations (“Garage Process”)
Commitment-Led
“Execution Mindset”
+Creativity-Led
“Experimental Mindset”
Delivery-Driven Metrics Of
“Efficiency”
+ Business-Driven Measures Of
“Effectiveness”

15. B R I D G E T H E G A P
• Management is not an enemy. Involve and consult them. After all, they pay for your
lunch!
• Understand the measures of success. Doing CI/CD might help, but is surely not
among them, though hitting a given date might well be (and following scrum
religiously is surely not!)
• Story point estimates might be good for your team. Now show them how you are
aligned to the big plans.
• Translate your progress in business terms. They don’t need to know your velocity (nor
do they really care!) but do care for their DSO and the IRR!
• Value is not what you deliver! It is what your customers get out of what you deliver.
Track those metrics (too).
• Finally, remember that bottom line is simply the efficiency game. Top line is where it
eventually matters. Always answer: how is my agile process (or, scrum) helping my
business build new stuff, sell more and keep customers happy?

16. T H A N K S
@tathagatvarma
tathagat.varma@gmail.com