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by tosh·14y ago·view on hn ↗
Great question.

I might have a harsh tone in my previous comment but I've got really frustrated with scrum (or implementations of it) over the last few years.

Scrum in my eyes is a process and from what I've seen it makes teams very process oriented. The whole idea of scrum master certification and the success it had in enterprise adoption might have something to do with that.

It incentivises teams (at least all the teams I've seen) to work for the process as good as possible. They focus on complying to the process, getting estimates right (or working in a way that makes the estimates right), they focus on the backlog instead of throughput or frequent re-prioritization …

If you can free yourself from viewing the 'process' as fundamental religion it's easier to apply agile & lean principles like focusing on delivering value and improving the framework, changing things, changing the process so it fits your needs, etc.

In a nutshell: I see scrum incentivising people to work in a way that is not agile but pseudo-agile/feel-good-agile. I see no feedback loop for the process itself (at least I see no one doing that, except teams that adopt kanban and scrumban or do scrum but …).

But I'm interested in learning from people who've made other experiences. It's an exciting topic.

3 comments
I see no feedback loop for the process itself...

If a team fails to deliver the functionality they committed to, there are consequences. Before the next sprint starts, they figure out what went wrong and incorporate that knowledge going forward. That's feedback on the process. And whether they have a green sprint or a red one, their velocity on the sprint is measured and used to project forward. Again, that's feedback on the process. Then there is a actually a dedicated retrospective phase at the sprint review where the team gives specific feedback on how the process went. The whole point of having sprints is to ensure that there's frequent feedback on the team's performance, distinct from any feedback they get on the product itself.

Disclaimer: I actually use a kanbanish leanish approach myself myself. It's my preferred process for my current working context. I'm also very much not a fan of the Scrum certification process and what that has tended to produce in the industry. However:

I see no feedback loop for the process itself

Is just nonsense :-)

Scrum has only five events - and two of those are retrospectives (one on the increment, one on the process used). If you aren't inspecting and adapting the process then you are not doing Scrum.

Now I freely admit that one of the most common ways that people don't do Scrum is by skipping those steps. Then again it's also the most common way I see people do kanban/lean badly as well.

Certification is a gimmick. Scrum guidebooks don't say you need to get certified. You can buy a degree in Kanban too if you want. Is programming worthless because Java certification exists?