I was doing a stream of consciousness on twitter to prepare for a post I’m writing. Not wanting to lose these thoughts, here are the thoughts.

The most important question when adopting Scrum to me is “should I be adopting Scrum?” But that seems to be the one question one can’t ask on a Scrum user group.

Asking the question “should I be doing Scrum?” should result in -“what’s my problem?”, “what am I trying to accomplish?”…

… “what fits my needs?” Scrum has several prerequisites for it to work well.

first, that you _have_ a team. That you can plan your work. That you know how to do the work needed. That you’ve been given a clear objective to work on. the myth of scrum is that it works everywhere. …

Not only does it ignore the environment it ignores what a team needs to do to do it.

I am writing a post on why we need different Scrum training now than what we needed 20 years ago. I admit to having troubles writing this in a positive manner.

So I’ve decided to do stream of consciousness on twitter both to help me organize my thoughts and to put out some ideas to both make people think or to question my thinking

Here goes. Scrum is designed for a cross-functional team to do product development where they’ve been given a clear directive on the objective of the product

In the original definition of Scrum it was presumed that the team had the capabilities to get the job done.

Scrum was not designed for IT. Not designed for maintenance. Not designed for shared services. It can be used there, but it is not the best approach there.

Scrum with engineering practices is not XP. Scrum focuses on the framework. XP focuses on its values and practices. What you focus on matters.

For a team to be effective with Agile it must have a controlled intake process, know how to work together, be able to complete stories within a sprint …

demonstrate what they’ve built periodically, learn how to improve their methods, not put a boundary around what works (probably more)

The idea that a framework drives what you need to do (e.g., sprints mean you have to learn how to get small stories) instead of focusing on what you really need to do directly …

… strikes me as odd and inefficient. The question should be, “what do we need to do to be effective?” “How does the different approaches available help?” …

Instead of my selecting the approach to take and then finding someone who mostly teaches that, would it make more sense to find someone who knows Scrum, Kanban and XP…

… and have them help me decide what to do?

If a team doesn’t have the pre-requisites for Scrum but wants to do it in an effective way, some of the Agile skills should be included in the Scrum training…

… this will mean you can’t spend a full two days on Scrum, but, the value of Scrum being simple is it should take two days to teach it.

The stated prerequisites of teams just need to figure things out puts the onus on the team – which is where it should lie.  But is Scrum the right tool?

Do teams have the right skill sets? Are they in the right eco-system? Do you even have a team?

If Scrum fails, the last thing to assume it is because the team isn’t following it. Maybe they are not. Maybe they shouldn’t be. Maybe they don’t know something they need…

Scrum comes from the framework will set the stage for them getting their work done. But it presumes that if they don’t know how to do Agile will figure it out …

If they will figure it out they probably already would have. So somehow adopting Scrum will help them figure it out. But it often just becomes a set of new meetings and ceremonies…

Blaming people for not “getting it” or not “being Agile” passes the buck. We forget it was a Scrum instructor that got them started…

… While you cannot be responsible for other’s actions as a coach/trainer you should be responsible for that they are getting what they need and not presume you’ve given it to them…

Why are they not moving forward? Trust and respect means to trust and respect people new to Agile’s motivation. Questioning that should be the _last_ thing done (if ever)

Instead, one should ask – what are they missing that it is better to give them than to expect that they will figure out while they are already overloaded and trying to learn something new?

Why not include that in the initial training? Why make them stumble? The answer sometimes given that we’re trying to get them to learn is fallacious. There will always be something to learn…

… Learning takes place best when not totally struggling. Learn in small steps is best. Learn just beyond your abilities.

Scrum is only one approach amongst several – XP, Kanban, Lean-Agile. They all are different. They each have value. Ironically, all three of these are more approaches than frameworks.

The framework approach (Scrum) is easier to grasp. But simpler is not necessarily better. Not when it leaves things out (even intentionally).

Intentionally leaving something out that is needed is not any better than unintentionally leaving something out that is needed.

Clearly most Scrum certification courses don’t attend to the preceding tweets. But if you want certification, check out @mikevizdos and @chethendrickson  …

… There are certainly others (just don’t know them). But if you’re willing to give up certification and keep a lot of money – check out me. 😊