My last blog was on how to set your Scrum Team up for success. So, this time, I cover what not to do, or in other words: How to Screw up Scrum. When you see Scrum gone wrong, you may be missing one (or more) of the following:
Top-down Executive Support
It always starts at the top. In my experience, I have never seen Scrum succeed in organizations that don’t support it from top leadership. They need to fully buy-in and recognize that to transform how you work, you must invest in it.
Executives Who Actually Understand
Even when your effort is supported, it still may not work if the executives don’t really “get it.” If they don’t understand the framework or make the necessary shifts in mindset, it could still flop. Make sure your leaders truly understand (instead of assuming they do).
Training
Scrum is a simple framework that is easy to understand, but difficult to master. Training is a critical piece that is unfortunately often skipped. Someone hears about Scrum, they do a little bit of research, and then try to “do it” without having had actual training. This rarely works.
The Necessary Accountabilities (aka Roles)
There are only three types of team members in Scrum: The Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Developers. When one of these is missing, you won’t succeed. And if you have one person playing more than one of these accountabilities, it creates an inherent conflict of interest, and will likely fail.
A Full Set of Cross-functional Skills
In addition to having the necessary accountabilities, you must have a full set of cross-functional skills necessary to complete an increment within a Sprint. If you have outside “experts” who aren’t on your team, you have a dependency, which creates a bottleneck. All skills should live within your Scrum Team.
Someone with Scrum Experience on the Team
Despite training and having all the right skills, if you throw a bunch of Scrum newbies together without any prior Scrum experience, it’s like the blind leading the blind. Having someone with prior experience on the team can help your team avoid a lot of problems.
All the Agile Activities (aka Events, Ceremonies)
While Scrum is a flexible framework, the activities that are spelled out in the Scrum Guide are essential to practicing Scrum. Teams that pick and choose what they feel like doing without any rhyme or reason will fall flat. They’re missing the whole point of the empirical process.
An Agile Coach
Like having someone on the team with Scrum experience, a highly skilled and experienced Agile Coach can also assist a new team when they’re getting started. They can help you avoid common problems and missteps that are often made by new Scrum Teams.
Goals
If you want to set your Scrum Team up for failure instead of success, then don’t have a Product Goal or Sprint Goals. Crafting goals may not be easy, but it’s important. The Product Goal is the overall goal, while the Sprint Goals support meeting that goal.
Definitions of Ready and Done
A perfect recipe for disaster is the lack of a Definition of Ready or Done. The Definition of Ready is about the User Story and its suitability for development – are all the necessary requirements clearly defined? The Definition of Done defines what it means for a work product to be considered complete.
Empiricism
One of the main underlying concepts that make Scrum work is empiricism. This includes Transparency, Adaptation, and Inspection. Without using all three of these aspects of empiricism, you’ll miss something vital. Make sure you’re regularly applying the empirical process.
Appropriate Team Size
The most recent Scrum Guide defines the maximum team size as consisting of no more than 10 people. In my experience, even that’s too big. Apply Jeff Bezos’ two-pizza rule for properly sizing your team – if you can feed your team with two large pizzas, it’s the right size.
Scrum Supporters
If you want to quickly sabotage your agile efforts, include a Negative Nancy or two on the team – they’ll shut down enthusiasm and safety immediately. Transitioning to Scrum isn’t easy, especially for people who are comfortable with the status quo. Have them on your team, and they’ll take it down.
Accountability
Scrum is a team sport and everyone on it is responsible for holding themselves and others accountable, which is inherent in a self-managed team. If the team can’t handle issues on their own or won’t acknowledge problems, they’re headed for disaster.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there are lots of ways to screw up your Scrum Team. These are just a few that I have seen, but I’m sure there are more things that could be done to cause Scrum teams to fail. If you have experienced other ways to kill your Scrum, please let me know in the comments below!