Let us talk seriously. Do we actually do Scrum?

I don’t believe that this hasn’t crossed your mind for not one but several dozen times. I mean, I cannot recollect an office, a PM or a SM who hasn’t confessed that they are not using Scrum as it is written in The Book. Of course, there cannot be a book for human beings to stick to every single word it has without hesitation or wish to make changes at some point. But we are not talking about small things here; we are talking about ground rules that are being changed by us while using Scrum.

Though I love using theory in the process, sometimes it is not possible to do everything the book says. After working more than 3 years in an Agile environment I can undoubtedly say one thing that we definitely stick to agility. Even more, we made Scrum more Agile than it is supposed to be.

Or might it be a new framework that we are actually inventing unconsciously? 🤔

Though Scrum is perfect for starting new projects I personally prefer to transfer to some other framework like Kanban after launching the product to production rather than sticking to pure Scrum. This is because there is always scope creep after each Sprint and at some point your team including you is getting demotivated. However, for some reason, Kanban is not sufficient for me as well. Well, using Scrumban, the mixture of both might help at this point.

Nonetheless, do we even do Scrumban? 🤔

This might seem strange to hear from an ex Scrum Master that Scrum is deviated in real life, however we have what we have. Maybe Scrum is too American? This pops up in my mind as sometimes sticking to Scrum events is not the best solution if you are burning up because your clients decide to change the whole scope of the product overnight.🤦🏻‍♀️

I do believe that sticking to Scrum theories are very helpful, but as Agile mindset implies, we need to adobe the theories into our processes. Also in spite of the fact Scrum guide says “Changing the core design or ideas of Scrum, leaving out elements, or not following the rules of Scrum, covers up problems and limits the benefits of Scrum, potentially even rendering it useless”, in reality, we come across to controversial situations that will need you to address Scrum theories differently. This makes it quite tricky to understand if you are new to Agile.🤦🏻‍♀️

With all this being said I do not take the responsibility for me telling you that you do not need to stick to Scrum as I have deep respect for Scrum, the Scrum Guide as Scrum was the staging environment for me to gain my experience and knowledge about Managing Projects. Scrum gives you focus, determination, and a constructive work scheme. I sometimes call it “Small Waterfalls”, you know, as after each Sprint you are supposed to ship something worthy. Scrum makes you see how to organize your upcoming 2–4 weeks and surprisingly enough I noticed that there are numerous developers who feel safe doing Scrum rather than Kanban.

Anyhow, I believe that by knowing Agile theories and understanding its frameworks eventually you’ll understand that Being Agile means to do everything for shipping quality products with every means whatsoever with small chunks with your and your company’s choice to stick or not to stick to one cemented process.

Being Agile simply means “To Be Agile”.

And that’s the beauty of it. 😎

See you in the next one.
Mariam Masha Khachatryan

November 2021
April 2022