Why Scrum Sucks?

Scrum is like a religion. Religion has values and certain rituals that support them. Without principles, rituals are meaningless.

Scrum sucks because we follow its rituals (e.g. Daily Scrum, Sprint Reviews) without living the values (Focus, Courage, Openness, Commitment and Respect).

Tweet

We tend to ignore the three pillars of Scrum (Transparency, Inspections and Adaptation) and fool everyone.

If we do not ingrain the fundamental Scrum values in the organisation’s DNA, then we are merely following Scrum rituals like well-trained dogs.

Hence, we should have a top-down training on Scrum (or any other Agile frameworks). The implementation of such methodologies should initiate from management and then to the Development team.

The value-add for any methodology is in its philosophy and not so much in its rules and tools. The rules and tools will change with time, but the underlying philosophy will not.

The success is not in merely following Scrum rules. Instead, understanding values and then following the rules. For example, if our people are hooked to their titles (e.g. Senior Developer, Principal Architect), then we cannot have a Scrum Development Team. Similarly, leadership needs to ensure if people are feeling safe to be transparent.

It is for this reason; I think authors of ‘The Scrum Guide’ mentioned, “Scrum is difficult to master”!