Scrum, it's not you, it's me and hope we can still be friends

 

(NOTE: The post below is not really my personal view, more of a sentiment I'm seeing amongst those practicing Scrum, though I agree much with it.)

I really loved the idea of Scrum, really I did!  But I’m starting to realize that in reality, what was supposed to release me from the shackles of the tyranny of my Gantt chart cum waterfall ways is the fact that I’m now feeling the very same burden and overhead for which I wished to escape!

The fact is that Scrum ass-u-me’s that we are good at estimating.  In fact very good, because only then could you finish a working deliverable at the end of each Sprint.  The problem was that we’re not, yet the irony is that by breaking things down into Sprint iterations that were badly estimated, we ended up jerry rigging the estimation for the next Sprint which cause Sprint after Sprint to miss their deliverables.  Rather than get frustrated over a prolonged period of time after a traditional planning process, we would get bursts of frustrations that started making us exhausted.

On exhaustion, while it initially seemed a great idea to have daily stand-up meetings, Sprint planning meetings and all that good stuff, like anything else people show up and are enthusiastic at first, but then as time moves on and the bottlenecks start to occur as described above, you as ScrumMaster will become quite prickly and everyone working around you demoralized or bored.

And for all you “Certified Scrum Coaches”, don’t tell me that “we’re just doing it wrong” as that’s starting to sound trite.  I harbor no grudge against the Scrum framework, but like all good things it must come to an end and someone (maybe me!) will come up with a new twist to an old trick and get us all moving and excited again (Kanban anyone?).

Scrum, it's not you, it's me and hope we can still be friends.