Scrum vs ScrumAnd vs ScrumBut:

which one are you doing?

Pedro Gustavo Torres

Being Agile since 2010

Agile Coach & Delivery Area Manager

@_pedro_torres

This year’s noteworthy achievements

201620142008

Champions League 2008…2014…2016

This year’s noteworthy achievements

2016201520142013

Agile Portugal 2013…2014…2015…2016…

The 2015 State of Scrum Report

Team• Product Owner• Scrum Master• Development Team

Artifacts• Product Backlog• Sprint Backlog• Increment• Definition of Done

(Transparency)

Events• The Sprint• Sprint Planning• Daily Scrum• Sprint Review• Sprint Retrospective

Scrum in a (Scrum Guide, July 2013)

Framework / Empirical process (Inspection, Adaption, Transparency)

Scrum brings clarity to your work

Learning Scrum – Shu Ha Ri

Vanilla Scrum Beyond Scrum?ScrumAnd

ScrumBut

Shuhari roughly translates to "first learn, then detach, and finally transcend."

•shu (守 ) "protect", "obey" — traditional wisdom — learning fundamentals, techniques, heuristics, proverbs •ha (破 ) "detach", "digress" — breaking with tradition — detachment from the illusions of self•ri (離 ) "leave", "separate" — transcendence — there are no techniques or proverbs, all moves are natural, becoming one with spirit alone without clinging to forms; transcending the physical

Thanks to Alistair Cockburn & Martin Fowler

Scrum doesn’t work?

Scrum – Addons vs Mod(ifications)s

Framework

Scrum

Saint Basil’s Cathedral

Scrum – Addons vs Mod(ifications)s

Addon

ScrumAnd

St Pancras Station

Scrum – Addons vs Mod(ifications)s

Modification

ScrumBut

La Sagrada Familia today

Scrum – Addons vs Mod(ifications)s

Framework

Scrum

La Sagrada Familia in the future

Scrum – Addons vs Mod(ifications)s

Addon

ScrumAnd

La Pedrera (Casa Milà)

Scrum – Addons vs Mod(ifications)s

Modification

ScrumBut

Scrum

ScrumAndWe use Scrum, AND…

(with Addons)

ScrumAnd“…When I was on my first Agile project, Ward Cunningham, one of our project coaches, said to me “Mitch, you need to adopt the XP engineering practices of TDD, pairing, refactoring and continuous integration or you’ll be sorry.” I dismissed this claim as I knew what I was doing. It was not until we were four sprints in when we all realized that we were screwed….”

Thanks to Mitch Lacey

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (1/18)We estimate in points… or maybe #NoEstimates at all!

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (2/18)We do sprint zero

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (3/18)We have grooming / refinement sessions

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (4/18)We have prioritization sessions

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (5/18)We use XP practices

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (6/18)We limit WIP (Work in Progress = Work at Risk)

Thanks to David Legge

@thecodecleaner

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (7/18)We use swarming (focusing on one story at a time)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (8/18)Developing and testing story by story (parallelism instead of mini waterfalls)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (9/18)We have all the team testing when needed (usually by the end of the sprint)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (10/18)Our team members have t-shaped skills (cross-functional)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (11/18)Our sprints start on Mondays and finish on Fridays

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (12/18)All our teams are aligned (sprint wise)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (13/18)Our team size is 7+-2

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (14/18)We invite everyone in the department to assist to our Sprint Reviews

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (15/18)We release often and during the sprint without (a lot of) effort

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (16/18)The Scrum Master is trying to be unnecessary (putting himself out of his job)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (17/18)We have 80% test / code coverage (Unit tests)

ScrumAnd – Popular Addons (18/18)We do code reviews (or we work with pull requests)

ScrumButWe use Scrum, BUT…

Scrum(with Modifications)

ScrumBut(ScrumBut) (Reason) (Workaround)

Thanks to Ken Schwaber & Ron Jeffries

We use Scrum, but having a Daily Scrum

every day is too much overhead, so we only have one per week.

We use Scrum, but Retrospectives are a waste of time, so we

don't do them.

We’re doing Scrum, but

Retrospectives aren’t effective, so we only do them

monthly.

We’re doing Scrum, but our stakeholders are too busy to come to

Sprint Reviews, so we stopped doing them.

We’re doing Scrum, but we couldn’t get everything

done in two weeks, so now we just let our

Sprints run as long as they need to

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (1/22)Our team members think of “my“ sprint / tasks / stories / story points instead of “our” sprint / tasks / stories / story points

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (2/22)We have a waterfall inside the sprint (testing only starts after all the coding is “done”)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (3/22)We have QAs / Testers working outside the team / sprint

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (4/22)QAs don’t speak to Devs whenever they find bugs (processes and tools over individuals and interactions)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (5/22)The team works for the KPIs and not for the (potential) value delivered

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (6/22)The team can't implement (technically) a story without the Dev Lead (or Architect)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (7/22)The PO is a “chicken” (isn’t allowed to speak in Dailies and can’t attend Retrospectives)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (8/22)We use 6 to 12 weeks sprints (instead of 1 to 4 weeks) to “avoid pain” / “disguise problems” (e.g. releases, manual regression testing, deploys to test environments)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (9/22)After a sprint we “stop” for 1 week of acceptance tests / bugfixing / stabilization (non consecutives sprints)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (10/22)Team members arrive late to scrum ceremonies

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (11/22)We have Daily scrums away from the physical / virtual board

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (12/22)We do Big Design Up Front (BDUF) instead of favoring emerging architectures and the Lean & XP concepts Last Responsible Moment (LRM), You Aren’t Gonna Need It (YAGNI) and Just in Time (JIT)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (13/22)We only have one person on our development team

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (14/22)In groomings / refinements the Scrum Master assigns user stories to developers (command and control vs self-organizing)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (15/22)In sprint planning we focus more in having everybody busy (due to specializations) instead of focusing on the maximum value we can deliver (output)... So we cherry pick / choose the stories that go in the sprint by the skills / comfort zone of each developer

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (16/22)We don’t have a Scrum Master… not even a Product Owner (they are M.I.A.)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (17/22)We stopped doing important things (e.g. visit customers) because “that's not scrum”

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (18/22)Our team is not cross functional

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (19/22)We have partially allocated team members (e.g. Developers)

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (20/22)We have horizontal and not vertical stories so we can’t deliver working software (increments) by the end of the sprint

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (21/22)We split user stories between development and testing

Development

Testing

ScrumBut – “Popular” modifications (22/22)Each story has an estimate for backend, frontend, integration and testing

User Story 1

5

2

3

One last comparision between And and ButIf a Smart (Swatch + Mercedes + Art) Fortwo was Scrum…

ScrumAnd

ScrumBut

For what it matters… don’t forget that your goal is to make (awesome) software… and not to (just) do Scrum

Final remarks

There is nothing “wrong“ in modifying the Scrum framework… you just shouldn’t (probably) call it Scrum! And (at least) make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons!

In the end… It is not about effectiveness (ScrumBut) but about efficiency (ScrumAnd)

Scrum vs ScrumAnd vs ScrumBut:

which one are you doing?Obrigado! Thank you! Gracias!