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Keeping Scrum Pure or Adapting Scrum to Your Culture?

  1. Posted on May 21, 2010 8:44:PM by John Clifford to Retrospectives
  2. Methods & Processes, Technique, Agile, Scrum, practices, Process

One question that I often hear is, “Do we have to implement Scrum by the book, or should we adapt it to our environment?”

The answer is, “Yes!” You should do both. And, they are not mutually exclusive.

To me, 'keeping Scrum pure' means adopting the three roles, four meetings, four artifacts, and two levels of commitment, and adhering to the principles behind Scrum, e.g., self-directed teams that commit, timeboxing, etc. This aligns with the Construx toolbox metaphor for software engineering best practices; Scrum is the tool rather than specific Scrum practices or processes.

'Adapting Scrum to your culture' means making the necessary practice accommodations to your reality. One example might be that, instead of foregoing daily standups for distributed teams, have the remote team members phone or video-conference in to daily standups. Yes, this is not optimal. But the reality is that many companies do not have working environments that facilitate team productivity, and we can't ignore that or maybe even change it... initially.

In my classes, I have borrowed a phrase/mindset from David Anderson: instead of saying "No," say "Yes, with consequences." For instance, when attendees ask if they can have people work on work outside their sprint backlog, I reply, "Yes, with consequences... you will have to adjust your expected team velocity to reflect the reduced bandwidth and increased context switching."

So, if you're going to adopt Scrum, adopt it in its entirety, adhere to the principles, and adapt the practices to accommodate your environment. This is the least-disturbing way to start. And then, utilize inspect and adapt and be willing to try to change environmental factors that interfere with increasing velocity... one factor at a time so you can 'boil the frog' without him realizing it.

3 Scrum Types - Yusuf Arslan-Web Development Blog said:

February 2, 2011 9:37:AM

Pingback from  3 Scrum Types | Yusuf Arslan - Web Development Blog

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John Clifford

John Clifford is a Senior Fellow and Agile Practices Lead at Construx Software where he focuses on software development, project management, portfolio management, product management, and organizational management practices. John has three decades experience across the software development and organizational management spectrum, working for small startups and woth world's largest software company. He has been an individual contributor, development manager, group project manager, development director, and CEO.

John has worked on software for everything from microcomputers to mainframes, in domains as disparate as mobile telephony platforms, desktop applications, asynchronous device drives, and computer-to-computer telecommunications. He has developed software in assembler, C, C++, .NET, and Java on platforms that include CP/M, Unix, VAX VMS, MVS/TSO, MacOS, Windows, OS/2, Windows CE, and Linux. He understands project management as a successful practitioner, and as one of the original software developers on Microsoft Project for Windows. His product management skills include the design and creation of industry-recognized software, and he has helped clients focus on the essentials to deliver more quickly with higher revenue.

John has led numerous successful Scrum and Lean-Kanban adoptions, and his clients include several Fortune 500 companies with locations across the US, Europe, and Asia. He holds Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, and Certified Scrum Professional certifcations for the Scrum Alliance. He is a charter Kanban Coaching Professional, at the invitation of the Lean-Kanban University. He presents at Lean, Agile, and Scrum conferences, and has been recognized for his knowledge and ability in the application of Agile and Lean principles to all facets of software project planning, management and execution.

 

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