Scrum is very big in the company right now. The teams that are able, all seem to want to transform into scrum teams. Its a badge showing ones more forward thinking. My wife herself moved to a scrum team two weeks ago and when I asked her what her experience was so far her response was 'scrum really really works'. How should I take that considering that statistically speaking she's not pulling from a large data set? Well, I know she has been interested in doing scrum for the past year or so. Is the any confirmation bias going on there?
I have nothing against scrum but over the years I have worked on many projects, some as a developer, some as a lead, some using more agile methodologies, some using more formal methodologies. There is no one right way to success and that is what I'm feeling these days as scrum is promoted as the answer, as people focus on learning the one scrum way, the right way. and, at the worst, as people look for the step by step scrum rules that they can follow to the letter.
My own team has been doing scrum for the past year. And when I compare this team with all the teams and projects that I have seen over the past 11 years of development. Scrum hasn't made this team more productive or more effective than the average. Why is that? On one hand it matters who is on the team. Are they effective? Do they have good judgement? Do they get stuff done? Do they get the right stuff done? Do they have foresight or are they reactive? Good people are described positively by the answers to those questions. And good people contribute effectively regardless of the official methodology that management endorses. A second factor is the culture of a team. Its hard to graft a series of practices on a team and have them result in anything different unless that team already has a potential to work with those practices. To give a metaphor for this, the problem here is very much the same as a problem in developmental economics. For some time economists have known that if one takes laws and systems from first world countries and transfer them to third world countries, the result is not a third world country that transforms into a first world country. The result is no improvement. Or putting the same idea in a more immediate context, the US can try bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq but Iraq still isn't going to be a beacon of freedom in the middle east. It will end up being Iraq as its always been, and maybe a bit worse. Good methods don't make effective teams; rather effective teams have good methods because there is an internal culture that promotes good methods intrinsically.
In all, just like its better to have societies with good rules, it better to have teams with good rules. But the key is to have thoughtful people of like minds to guide themselves along because there are never enough rules to cover infinite, unexpected imperfections in the real world. Good luck to those people who have found their scrum religion. But for me, I just end up thinking of the words of Antione de Saint-Exupery - 'Every religion claims it knows how to make men but none can say in advance what kind of men it will make'. And so it goes for methodologies and teams as well.
--Do your best - Marco
I have nothing against scrum but over the years I have worked on many projects, some as a developer, some as a lead, some using more agile methodologies, some using more formal methodologies. There is no one right way to success and that is what I'm feeling these days as scrum is promoted as the answer, as people focus on learning the one scrum way, the right way. and, at the worst, as people look for the step by step scrum rules that they can follow to the letter.
My own team has been doing scrum for the past year. And when I compare this team with all the teams and projects that I have seen over the past 11 years of development. Scrum hasn't made this team more productive or more effective than the average. Why is that? On one hand it matters who is on the team. Are they effective? Do they have good judgement? Do they get stuff done? Do they get the right stuff done? Do they have foresight or are they reactive? Good people are described positively by the answers to those questions. And good people contribute effectively regardless of the official methodology that management endorses. A second factor is the culture of a team. Its hard to graft a series of practices on a team and have them result in anything different unless that team already has a potential to work with those practices. To give a metaphor for this, the problem here is very much the same as a problem in developmental economics. For some time economists have known that if one takes laws and systems from first world countries and transfer them to third world countries, the result is not a third world country that transforms into a first world country. The result is no improvement. Or putting the same idea in a more immediate context, the US can try bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq but Iraq still isn't going to be a beacon of freedom in the middle east. It will end up being Iraq as its always been, and maybe a bit worse. Good methods don't make effective teams; rather effective teams have good methods because there is an internal culture that promotes good methods intrinsically.
In all, just like its better to have societies with good rules, it better to have teams with good rules. But the key is to have thoughtful people of like minds to guide themselves along because there are never enough rules to cover infinite, unexpected imperfections in the real world. Good luck to those people who have found their scrum religion. But for me, I just end up thinking of the words of Antione de Saint-Exupery - 'Every religion claims it knows how to make men but none can say in advance what kind of men it will make'. And so it goes for methodologies and teams as well.
--Do your best - Marco
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