Gummy Bears and Unicorns Don't Transform Organizations

Scrum is like a trojan horse, suddenly you're talking Sprints, Product Owners, Scrum Masters and Product Increments.

New language takes over the old language. The new language indicates this is the new way of doing things that should take over the old way.

The main problem is that Scrum rarely changes the organization. The old system resists the trojan horse. The new language is slowly transmuted and new concepts are introduced to bridge the gap with the old paradigm:
- Definition of Ready
- Sprint Zero
- Testing Sprints
- Sprint Demos

And so on.

If Scrum is a trojan horse, it's best compared to an unicorn with a belly filled with gummy bears.

The gummy bears taste great but chewing on gummy bears doesn’t fundamentally change the organization. After a while, employees just look at the unicorn and think: "What the hell should we do with this strange, mythical creature?"

And now, over time, many teams begin thinking: even the gummy bears don't taste that great. Why do we keep up with all the demands of that pesky high maintenance unicorn?

And now, suddenly everyone is complaining about the unicorn, because we're looping through all these boring meetings while nothing fundamentally changes.

It's no surprise the general consensus of where we are now becomes:

Screw that fussy unicorn with its darn enticing gummy bears.