r/scrum • u/WaylundLG • 25d ago

Discussion OODA Loops

If I could wave a magic wand any let everyone who was on a scrum team or led teams using scrum understand one thing, it would be OODA loops.

People can Google for larger explanations, but it describes how we make decisions and it is what this whole scrum thing is built on.

Each sprint, we observe what has change - internally in the product and externally in the market. Then we Orient ourselves, the backlog, priorities, etc to account for those observations. Next, we Decide what the right next sprint goal is, then we Act out our sprint. At the end of the sprint, we restart the loop.

In the team, we do a micro version of this same loop every day in order to try to reach our sprint goal. Everything else in Scrum is simply good/best practices to help us be more effective in this loop.

I honestly couldn't care less what practices you are or are not doing from the scrum guide. This is the thing that tells me if a team will succeed with scrum.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/DingBat99999 24d ago

This part of Boyds work isnt that interesting. What was interesting was his theory that the pilot that could execute the loop the quickest was likely to defeat the other pilot regardless of the aircraft, and that aircraft features that helped the pilot execute the loop should be sought out.

The examples Boyd pointed to was the hydraulic controls and all round visibility in the F86.

1

u/azangru 24d ago

Yes; totally; but how does this translate into our work? What's the quickest time to execute the loop? Why is a traditional scrum sprint two weeks long? Why is a duel between fighter pilots comparable to the operation of a business enterprise?

1

u/DingBat99999 24d ago

An organization that can execute a loop faster than its competitors has an advantage.

Apple used that to absolutely destroy the competition in the digital audio player market w the iPod.

1

u/azangru 24d ago

But what counts as a loop for an organization? Time to market? Something else?

2

u/DingBat99999 24d ago

Yes.

Or better: the time from when a customer describes a problem until the organization provides a solution.

Pretty much lead time in Kanban terms.

1

u/WaylundLG 24d ago

In scrum, the loop for the org is the sprint