Not all that's missing in Scrum should be missing

 

Scrum proponents take pride in Scrum being a simple framework. This, of course, just means that Scrum provides a starting point and leaves the rest to the team to figure out.

Guidance such as "Shu Ha Ri" - copy, innovate, transcend is often given. But there are flaws in this thinking. Copying an existing approach in knowledge work is dangerous. No two teams in a company, let alone the world, are exactly alike. Systems-thinking (which includes culture) suggests that any starting point needs to attend to the team’s situation to both see where to start and how the team is required to adapt. Unfortunately, Scrum is not strong in systems-thinking.

We also need to remember that an understanding of principles is required to innovate. Much of Dark Scrum and Scrum But comes from not understanding principles of Flow and Lean. I don’t think I need to discuss transcendence.

There are several unasked questions here:

1. If teams can figure a what’s missing out why haven’t they already done so?
2. What concepts should be taught to all teams adopting Scrum?
3. What learning model should we use?

I’ll cover these in future posts.