Using Agile and Scrum for something other than software development is pretty cutting edge, but it seems to be turning main stream rather quickly. This year’s keynote at Agile 2009 Conference by Alistair Cockburn addressed just that, Agile is like a melted iceberg. It dropped into the water of software development, left its traces (ripples and waves), but is now common practice and a natural part of the whole.

Outside Total Attorneys I’ve talked to companies using it for their sales, marketing and customer care. I’ve read reports about the Church of Sweden using Scrum too. Whether it’s used to organize philanthropy or software development is of no consequence. These teams all have common goals that need innovative solutions and Scrum is an excellent way to achieve them.

You’ve seen the TED video called Surprising Science of Motivation by Dan Pink. That discussion contains much of the same logic behind the Scrum process. If you are trying to solve difficult, imperceptible problems, then you need to be in a creative mind frame. Many companies are too good at creating a factory like environment. It’s almost instinctual. Unfortunately, that kills innovation and creativity.

It should be no surprise, most motivation incentives that worked great for easy tasks actually slow people down when they are trying to solve complex or barely visible problems. What works best is intrinsic motivation, focusing on autonomy, mastery and purpose. This is what scrum does really well; allowing team members to self organize, utilize their strengths and work with a sense of purpose to achieve hyper productivity.

Jeff Sutherland has an interesting metaphor he calls “red pill, blue pill” based on The Matrix. He warns people learning scrum that it’s the equivalent of Neo choosing the red pill and waking up in a spaceship, realizing that his whole existence had been an illusion. Once you have learned how to work as a self organized team, you never want to go back to being plugged in to the machine.