Our continued commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Dear Scrum Allies,

In June of 2020, Scrum Alliance announced our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in support of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color community. We vowed to improve our organization and the community at large by taking the necessary steps to support BIPOC voices in the agile community and to confront our own biases. Here are some of the steps we have taken to improve ourselves and our community so far.

We said we will use our platform to amplify and support the voices of our BIPOC community members. 

• We opened our Resource Library to article submissions from our diverse community of coaches and trainers to ensure multiple voices and perspectives are shared.
• In a recent virtual event, Scrum Mastery: Beyond the Classroom, we selected a diverse array of speakers and panelists, 60% of which were women compared to 20-30% in past events. 

We said we will hold ourselves accountable for increasing diversity in our organization, leadership, and our community by creating tools to eliminate implicit and explicit bias. In addition, we will ensure that no internal role is filled until a diverse candidate pool has been interviewed.

Board of Directors

• In our recent Board of Directors SCM Election, the three finalists were women of color. The winner of the election, Evelyn Tian, will begin her term January 1, 2021.
• In addition to Evelyn, the Board also elected Euvin Naidoo who was recognized by Forbes.com as one of Africa’s TOP 10 most ‘Powerful and Influential Men.’ Euvin will also begin his term on January 1, 2021. 

Our Hiring Practices 

• We have committed to eliminating bias from our interview process by redacting all personal, non-skill-related information in resumes until after we decide to bring individuals in for interviews.
• We’ve taken steps to ensure that all interviewers participate in anti-bias training before participating in our hiring events.
• We’ve conducted an analysis to ensure that all employees are paid equitably.

We said we will prioritize understanding and examining structural and systemic barriers that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color may face in gaining access to our community and certifications and work with our communities to eliminate these barriers.

• We introduced the Comparative Agility DEI Agile Team Assessment to our community, which is available to Certified Scrum Alliance members as part of their active certification benefits. The tool lets users evaluate DEI on their teams and in their organization to identify areas for growth and improvement.

We have amplified and supported the efforts of amazing trainers and coaches who have offered deeply discounted or free services to the underserved by waiving upload fees and promoting their efforts:

• Lizzy Morris, CST®, offered free CSM® and CSPO® training to members of the BIPOC community.
• Agile Pakistan’s Pete Deemer, CST and Mohsin Shahzad offered a highly discounted course and  donated the proceeds to Children’s Welfare funds in Pakistan.
• Reza Farhang offered a deeply discounted course for Iranian students.
• Martin Salias offered a free course for a transgender student in Argentina.
• Joke Vandemaele (CST), Aanu Gopald (CEC/CTC) offered a free course and mentorship opportunity to young girls in Nigeria.
• CSTs Adam Weisbart, Jimi Fosdick, Bernie Maloney, Angela Johnson, Tom Mellor, Stuart Mitchell, Jaya Shrivastava, Aanu Gopald, and Lasse Ziegler offered courses for free or low-cost for the unemployed, university students, and veterans.
• Brandon Raines, CEC offered free coaching services to nonprofits and organizations focusing on DEI initiatives.

We said we will review our community-based funding priorities to support Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in our community.

• We supported Black Girls Code, a nonprofit focused on offering young girls of color opportunities to learn the skills needed to thrive in STEM. We are also working with the organization to determine how we may further support their mission.

We said we will prioritize DEI in the formal structures that currently exist to hear from our communities, including actively seeking participation from our BIPOC community members. Internally, we will host a DEI co-op meeting, geared towards supporting both our internal and external communities, every single sprint.

• Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion co-op has 36 members who meet every other week to discuss progress on DEI efforts across various teams. We’ve also committed to reading and discussing books on BIPOC issues to foster communication and understanding of the issues facing the BIPOC community today.
• We have made a focused effort to bring more diverse perspectives and voices to our Practitioner Community Advisory Team (Prac-CAT).  Since June, we’ve added four new members, representing various regions, languages, experience in agile, and BIPOC voices we did not have before. 

We said we will reaffirm our commitment to fighting racism and discrimination within our company and in our communities, ensuring that not only is there a seat at the table for every member of our community but that they are welcome and their plates full.

• We updated our welcome emails to newly certified members to include our Code of Ethics, a reminder to all who join our community that we take seriously our commitment to providing a welcoming environment to all.
• In September and October 2020 we hosted two webinars titled “Agile Meets Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”  The focus was on the importance of DEI in our workplaces and how the Scrum values and pillars can be applied to further DEI in companies today. Watch: Part 1 Replay and Part 2 Replay. Read more.
• We’ve committed to improving representation in our promotional materials. In collaboration with Comparative Agility, we updated materials to better represent our diverse customer base.
• We’ve updated our internal employee handbook to be gender-neutral and strengthened our policies regarding diversity and harassment, ensuring that all team members have a working environment that is safe, welcoming, and free of harassment or discrimination.

Additional steps we've taken to improve accessibility for our global audience 

• We have translated the CSM web page to Portuguese to make incremental progress towards making our certifications more accessible to a global audience.
• We are actively translating resources into Spanish with the help of a small volunteer group in Guatemala: the Latin American Inclusion Volunteer Team, which will be supporting our LATAM community members. Their first initiative is to translate a variety of articles on the Scrum Alliance website into Spanish. We will be working with the group to prioritize content to translate and identify what is most valuable to their community.
• We held the first-ever Agile Coaching Retreat Live Online, which entailed five days of sessions in four different time zones around the globe. Each region featured three hours' worth of learning and engagement. The Retreat included the LATAM region with sessions presented in Spanish. We reached a diverse audience as participants attended from over 76 countries and speakers came from all regions of the world.

We will continue to hold ourselves accountable for following through on our commitments and providing transparency for our community members in the process.

This update is a start. Our work is not done. As mentioned before, Ally is a Verb and we will continue to iterate, to listen to our community members, and to use our voice and our platform to work towards a more loving and just world. Please feel free to reach out to us.

Sincerely, 

The Scrum Alliance Team

Related Collection

Collection - Our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion