The Bad News? Scrum is REALLY Popular!

From our Agile friend, Adam Weisbart...

The Bad News? Scrum is Really Popular!

Excerpt: In many, many cases, orgs aren’t adopting Scrum because they believe in the values of Agility, they adopt it because they think they’ll magically get teams to do twice the work in half the time.

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I’ve been doing and teaching Scrum for over a decade.

Each year I think we’ve hit “peak Scrum”, which gets me worried because I’ve seen Scrum help so many people and organizations. It’s transformative, and I’d miss its magic if it disappeared.

But I’ve got some bad news…

Each year, Scrum seems to get more and MORE popular. There’s no end in sight.

“Wait… what?! Why all this doom and gloom Adam? It’s POPULAR!”

One reason: Scrum is so popular organizations are adopting it simply BECAUSE IT’S SO POPULAR.

…and that’s a horrible reason to do anything.

In many, many cases, orgs aren’t adopting Scrum because they believe in the values of Agility, they adopt it because they think they’ll magically get teams to do twice the work in half the time.

When the signatories of the Agile Manifesto came up with a document that’d frame the movement, they were doing something RADICAL. They were doing what was unpopular at the time… They were shifting the focus to PEOPLE over process, and DELIVERED VALUE over documentation…

It was revolutionary.

Trouble is, if people aren’t careful when something becomes popular, the magic gets lost.

People start focusing on processes over people again, and we’re back where we started.

So you have a choice…

Do you focus on burning through the questions in the Daily Scrum as quickly as possible so you can get back to the P1 bug someone insisted you fix today? Do you throw your hands in the air in despair over an organizational structure that doesn’t allow your team to deliver value every sprint?

Or do you do something much harder (and far more rewarding)?

Do you choose to join the ranks of thousands of agilists that have come before you to be a revolutionary who helps their team and organization improve the way you work together? Do you help others see that sometimes we need to mindfully change the things “we’ve always done this way” because they don’t serve us any longer?

If you feel stuck, overwhelmed, and unsure where to start, I have a suggestion…

Help your team run an amazing retrospective at the end of this next sprint. One you’ve never run before. One that will help your team figure out what small step you can all take to help your organization down the hard path of meaningful change.

https://RecessKit.com

Adam

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Adam Weisbart, CST | 415-GO-AGILE (462-4453) | https://weisbart.com

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