We should save Scrum from Scrum

It seems a paradox but it isn’t. I start to think that we should save Scrum from Scrum: from the weight of his popularity that could transform it in something different.

More and more often I see Scrum not well understood and applied in organizations. This concerns different aspects: Scrum roles, collaboration of people, estimation, etc. We have already a name for such situations: it’s the well known “ScrumBut”. The real problem is when the “But” part is much more bigger than the “Scrum” part and what is kept it’s just an iterative framework with people playing the Scrum roles and doing some ceremonies with the fundamental agile principles negatively impacted or no more present. You can see development managers playing the Product Owner role instead of someone with business knowledge, ScrumMaster with a subordinate hierarchical link with the PO, Scrum Masters who assign the tasks to people, estimation done by the team with in reality a Gantt Chart already done to tell how things should go… I’m sure you have already seen such situations and many others.

I think it’s time for reflection to understand where “Scrum” is no more “Scrum” and when it’s not bringing anymore the benefits it was developed for and why we have such common situations. Read more of this post