Don’t call it Scrum
Scrum is a promise to be broken at your own peril
Sometime earlier this year, I was talking to the tech lead of a California-based gaming organization. Asked what I did for a living, I said “I’m a Scrum Master,” which caused him to sigh and try to change the topic. But now I was curious and told him I sensed he was frustrated. Where, I asked, was this frustration coming from?
“Oh,” he said, wearily. “It’s nothing about you personally, but I am just sick and tired of agile in general and Scrum in particular.”
Unfortunately, I knew exactly why. Please forgive me if I wax poetic here, but reactions like these are a result of being bludgeoned with Zombie Scrum 99% of the time. This pain stems from true heartbreak, the soul-shattering pain and despair that seep into the cracks when the promises of Scrum have been broken.
“I am just sick and tired of agile in general and Scrum in particular.”
The number of people I encounter who are “sick and tired” of Scrum has risen over the last few years. All of them have the same story. Someone sold them Scrum, promised them continuous improvement, “twice the work in half the time” and super fast delivery.
What they got instead was weird meetings that served no purpose, missed deadlines, chaotic development, and poor quality.
It is even worse when speaking to developers. They are promised self-management, freedom to improve their craft and a worthy purpose to strive for. What they get instead are hard deadlines forcing them to work overtime to fulfill a requirements document disguised as a product backlog.
Through their work, these developers are the very people we depend on to shape the future of our org (and maybe the world), and we are disillusioning them, hampering their desire to be truly great. It gets even worse when — despite effectively hamstringing Scrum through gross negligence of the framework — people who call themselves Scrum Masters insist that “we are doing Scrum, so you have to estimate in story points and have to have a retrospective after every sprint.”
Why, I ask? Why have a retrospective when it is obvious that nothing will change until the management gods deem change necessary? Why estimate in story points when the complexity does not matter because you cannot make tradeoffs in scope? Why work in Sprints when we never inspect and adapt what we are doing, and deliver to the customer every 1 1/2 months?!
To me, this behavior — calling something Scrum when it clearly is not — is a cardinal sin of Scrum Masters. Your team depends on you, and ideally, they trust you to make their life better. Instead, knowingly or not, you are dangling the promises of Scrum in front of their faces to keep them motivated in spite of a hostile environment. This is not only neglecting your Scrum Master duties to improve the organization, I’m actually going as far as to say that it is deeply cruel. I understand you may not want it to be this way. Nevertheless, by pretending to pursue the promises of Scrum in an environment where those in power don’t intend to truly realize them, you’re basically running a scam.
“A good Scrum Master helps a Scrum Team survive in an organisation’s culture. A great Scrum Master helps change the culture so Scrum Teams can thrive.” — Geoff Watts
So here is my plea to you.
Don’t do Scrum. Don’t call it Scrum. Don’t hold Sprint Retrospectives, don’t do Sprints, don’t co-opt the language to disguise a waterfall. You’re going to make people hurt.
Call a fish a fish and call a waterfall project a waterfall project.
You can (and should!) still work towards a Scrum implementation, but you know as well as I that you have to break some eggs before you can make Scrum omelets. However: Until your organization is truly ready to commit to change, it is far, far better to not call the way you are working “Scrum.” Why? because it creates false expectations, and because it creates serious impediments to a real Scrum implementation. After all, you are going to have to reclaim words like “Sprint Planning” and explain that they mean something completely different than what you have been doing so far. You have to explain that the way we’ve been doing Daily Scrums no longer works the way people are used to. It’s going to create a lot of friction, a lot of resistance, and a not-insignificant amount of pain. If I were asked whether I wanted to start a Scrum implementation from scratch or fix a broken one, I’d go for the former 9 times out of 10. In these organizations, the promises of Scrum have not been abused and perverted yet. They’re still fresh and will give people the energy to work through the confusion and pain that comes with sweeping organizational change. In organizations where the promises of Scrum have been weakened to the point of resentment, you’re going to have a much harder time motivating people.
However, there is another trend that gives me hope. Many job ads I have found on my latest job hunt ask for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters who coach executive leadership in Scrum and Agile. This is a great development a testament to Agile’s move from the sphere of pioneers to the sphere of Settlers. Agile is no longer “that thing with the sticky notes that the nerds in the basement do”, but a real possibility.
The promises of Agility, of Scrum, have been recognized and are becoming common. Managers want to see if they can get in on this “reducing risk” business, and delight their customers through early and frequent delivery of software.
It is our job as Scrum Masters and Agile coaches to get them there and to make them commit to the last two promises of Agility: Drastic Change and Hard Work.
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