Mindful Scrum: Mobilising mindfulness practices to foster agility in project management teams

Abstract

• Explores mindfulness practices that influence agility in Scrum teams by strengthening focus, collaboration, psychological safety, and resilience. • Shows how mindfulness practices support the shift from 'doing agile' to 'being agile' by cultivating metacognitive capacities that underpin the agile mindset. • Proposes the Mindful Scrum framework, integrating Mindful Moments into Scrum events and introducing a Mindful Mentor role to facilitate collective mindfulness. • Reveals how Scrum's iterative structure provides a structured container for embedding mindfulness practices into team routines. • Contributes to metacognitive practice theory by demonstrating how mindfulness can be intertwined with organisational practices in project management contexts. . Scrum, the most widely adopted agile project management framework, appears easier to understand than to implement. Facing repeated disruptions, Scrum teams often struggle to maintain focus, foster collaboration, and cultivate an agile mindset. This study investigates how mindfulness practices can influence agility in Scrum teams and how Mindful Moments can be integrated within Scrum, addressing an acknowledged research gap. Using an empirical qualitative research approach, data were collected through multiple online focus groups that replicated a Scrum-like process. The analysis identified specific mindfulness practices that positively influence agility, alongside notable challenges and conditions to be considered for the successful mobilisation of mindfulness practices. Scrum and mindfulness naturally complement each other: Scrum provides a structured foundation for integrating mindfulness, while the latter strengthens the agile mindset and Scrum values. An evolved Scrum framework entitled ‘Mindful Scrum’ is the outcome of this research.