"It Doesn't Work Because They're Not Doing Scrum"
Nobody Cares About Doing Scrum By the Book - Except Scrum Masters
"Yeah, but it doesn't work because they're not doing Scrum.", says the Scrum Master.
Please take your head out of the Scrum clouds, where there is a leprechaun with a magnificent pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that appears when you perfectly adhere to the Scrum Guide. 🌈
The reality is that most teams are trying to do Scrum and are suffering because of it.
Here’s the reality of Scrum that isn’t described in the Scrum Guide:
The bottom panel probably represents the majority of Scrum Teams out there. Yes, it can’t be described by the Scrum Guide because it isn’t Scrum. So while "But they're not doing Scrum" is almost always correct, it isn't helpful and ignores their reality.
Scrum Teams couldn’t care less whether they’re doing Scrum or not. They want it to work for them and make their lives easier. Not for all reasons for it to not be working to be discarded because you’re not doing Scrum.
There is a big world of difference between Scrum in theory and Scrum in practice, and you will never bridge that gap by discarding reality and pointing at how lovely the rainbow looks when you have the most pristine of conditions.
Unfortunately, conditions are rarely pristine, and you will never improve if you keep daydreaming about how lovely Scrum is described in the Scrum Guide.
Perfect adherence to the Scrum Guide is never the goal, and Scrum will not produce the results you want if you keep obsessing over how you do Scrum. All it means is that you’re stuck in the Scrum bubble and must get out of it.
Your Scrum must move to the background.
The more it’s at the forefront, the more likely it’s an obstacle to whatever you’re trying to achieve. If you’re not flexible, you can’t be adaptable, and you can’t succeed with Scrum. That’s what you should fix, not whether it follows the Scrum Guide or not.
Without flexibility, you will not be able to discover how to deliver the most value. It will not be possible to figure out the best way of working. It will also not be possible to figure out the best plan when new information comes to your attention.
Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation… and especially the last step. Not because the Scrum Guide says so, but because Darwin said so.
Scrum is a perfectly incomplete framework and at best it can remain perfectly incomplete. “You complete me” - doesn’t apply to Scrum. We must complete Scrum.
One reason Scrum is done in so many different ways is that there are hundreds of greedy training organizations that teach it in various ways. Scrum is just a Framework. As an Agile Coach and Scrum Master, I teach Jeff and Ken's Scrum Guide, and then we implement what fits the team. At the retrospective, they discuss and may determine better ways to improve their process. I see so many Scrum teams being destroyed due to the incompetence of the Scrum Masters. The name of the game is to teach the team to be self-managing, meaning they internally decide who does what, when, and how.
And as far as Story points that came from XP, even the originator wishes he had never come up with the concept due to them being abused so much by Velocity. Management uses Velocity to measure teams against teams and individuals against individuals. Even if Velocity is used as it should be for a single team, it is inaccurate. If half the team is out sick, they have poor Velocity, and they are accused of being lazy. Management doesn't care about Capacity, they just see the change in Velocity and are accusatory.
The term "Scrum Team" should be abolished. These are software development teams. Scrum is a tool that, as stated in the article, people do not use correctly most of the time, if there is even such a thing as a correct scrum. Scrum is fairly small part of the dev process, but is sold as if it is the be all and end all, and ends up wasting so much time - better to be agile. The article is the "agile mindset" vs fixed processes expressed quite well.