We do Scrumbut

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EricGu has a great post on something he calls scrumbut.  It rings very true.  One of the teams I was in formerly did exactly this:

  • Train everyone on Scrum
  • Used "Scrum, but" with all the changes that work against agile principles like no customer on the project, and wildly long deliverable cycles
  • Called it scrum
  • Blamed Scrum and Agile when it failed.

Certified Scrum Masters should be derided if they allow a process to be called Scrum if it doesn't stick with some basic practices:

  • scope managed as a backlog
  • customer decides priority for any items on the backlog
  • sprints not to exceed 30 days
  • team (individual contributors only, no PM, no chickens) picks the items off the backlog that they can do in a sprint. 
  • Use of a daily burndown to track progress, not Project or Primavera
  • Monthly demonstration of progress directly to the customer or customer representative