Scrum uses a burn down graph to track progress. Turns out this is a powerful motivator.
An article in Harvard Business Review discusses a survey of 600 managers on motivation in the workplace. The number one motivator from manager's perception is recognition for good work. However a multi-year study tracking workers has a very different finding. Contrary to manager's belief workers define that progress is the top motivator.
The article supports the Scrum practices of tracking progress every day, of removing impediments, and of celebration of progress toward the companies goals.
An interesting TED video is Dan Pink's talk 'The surprising science of motivation'. Where he also describes how our common understanding of motivation via rewards is contradicted by the science on motivation.
An article in Harvard Business Review discusses a survey of 600 managers on motivation in the workplace. The number one motivator from manager's perception is recognition for good work. However a multi-year study tracking workers has a very different finding. Contrary to manager's belief workers define that progress is the top motivator.
"On days when workers have the sense they're making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak."Note the removal of impediments in the quote above.
The article supports the Scrum practices of tracking progress every day, of removing impediments, and of celebration of progress toward the companies goals.
An interesting TED video is Dan Pink's talk 'The surprising science of motivation'. Where he also describes how our common understanding of motivation via rewards is contradicted by the science on motivation.
Comments
Steady, day by day progress motivates better. Ten years ago I worked as a network administrator at a big company. I didn't have the newest tools, a big budget or even a high salary. But I liked that job because at the end of every day I could see some progress: I had installed a router, found the cause of a problem, or at least discarded a hypothesis about some problem.
I also find that celebrating progress might seem a little childish, but it definitely helps.
Another thing I found very interesting and directly related to Scrum is the finding in the HBR article about collaboration.
Workers collaborated on 53% of the BEST days. And they collaborated on 43% of the WORST days. Collaboration, finished 2nd behind PROGRESS in the activities found in diaries from the study.
That tells me that besides getting progress made visible (something Scrum does very well). We need to focus on making collaboration fun and effective - to move it into a 'best day' event rather than a 'worst day' event, more often than 50% of the time.
You gloss over the crux of the matter when you wrote, "We need to focus on making collaboration fun and effective." How do you do that? What exactly do managers, supervisors and colleagues need to do to create that state? Is it just collaboration or moving from a 'worst day' to a 'best day'? If so what do we do with the 57% of the population who did not collaborate on a 'worst day'? Is that acceptable and if not what do we do to get them to opt-in?
What do you do?
BTW - I don't interpret the stats as "57% of the population who did not collaborate on a worst day". I assume that 43% of the people noted having a worst day AND collaborating on that day. Correlation - not causation.