Scrum: the good, the bad and the ugly Experiences, reflections and future directions, regarding Scrum application in practice Rini van Solingen professor in global software engineering CTO at Prowareness We-On - D.M.vanSolingen@tudelft.nl - R.vanSolingen@prowareness.nl
Which hat today?? Professor or Consultant? Giraffe-view: Head in the clouds, but feet on the ground (in the dirt) September 13, 2017 3
My 4 books on Scrum (and Agile) 1. 2. 3. 4. 1. The Power of Scrum Jeff Sutherland, Rini van Solingen & Eelco Rustenburg 2. Scrum for Managers Rini van Solingen & Rob van Lanen 3. How to lead self-managing teams? Rini van Solingen 4. The Responsive Enterprise Rini van Solingen & Vikram Kapoor September 13, 2017 4
The Bad September 13, 2017 7
Scrum the bad nasty 1. Need for super PO s Product-owner is unfairly positioned as solution for decision making Great product-ownership seems impossible for a single person 2. Dysfunction of teams Building great, skilled, competent, stable teams is really complicated Not every employee becomes happy in a team Attrition is an exponential enemy of stable teams, but is neglected 3. Seems so simple Unfair expectations regarding ease of use and simplicity Scrum is extremely hard to master requires a 180 degrees switch Scrum demands rigorous changes in governance and culture to let it really prosper -> Doing Scrum does not make you Agile
Agile with attrition is very risky Source: Smite, Darja; Van Solingen, Rini. What's the True Hourly Cost of Offshoring? IEEE Software, 2016, 33.5: 60-70. September 13, 2017 10
The Ugly September 13, 2017 11
Scrum the ugly 1. Abuse is too easy Short-term focus with quick wins now and technical debt later Pushing work to teams by product-owners from Sprint to Sprint: pressure cooker burn-out Risk for waterfall in disguise with ready-teams, detailed product backlogs and market delivery at the end 2. Deadlock between teams Hard to scale - independent end-to-end teams often unfeasible Stalls with strong dependencies between teams, but is hard to avoid 3. Hype Scrum is used as silver-bullet for everything (stickies and stand-ups) Big chances for over-processing and meeting-explosion
Yes, but after all these problems. September 13, 2017 14
Scrum is being rolled out everywhere September 13, 2017 15
The Good September 13, 2017 16
Scrum the good 1. Focus on DONE: iterative value and results Finishing stuff early and often drives results, gives early feedback, prevents rework and waste If things are unfinished, you are not flexible. Scrum brings agility through constant focus on finished results: DONE increments 2. Rhythm through Sprints: simplicity and freedom Time-boxed short Sprints create agility, bring freedom, simplicity and predictability Sprints change to focus on work instead of moving people around 3. Self-cleaning effects: heavily underestimated Short iterations with sprint reviews and retrospectives fix things Self-managing and self-organizing teams focus on improvement
Traditional (u-boat) vs Empirical (dolphin) September 13, 2017 19
CU-Later versus CU-Soon September 13, 2017 20
The Brill iant September 13, 2017 21
Scrum the Brilliant 1. Jump start for fast results that focus on value, customer and user Scrum helps to jump start delivery when the concept, culture and cadence are part of everyone s standard way of working There is no alternative for speed and agility than customer focused short-cyclic teams It is just a matter of time until Scrum is part of everyone s DNA Building great teams in split seconds? September 13, 2017 22
Rini van Solingen is consultant and coach in Scrum, Agility and Enterprise Responsiveness - Speed. He helps customers to get software engineering under control and rigorously increase their return-on-investment, time-tomarket and productivity. Rini is CTO at Prowareness We-On and also a professor in Globally Distributed Software Engineering at Delft University of Technology. In his research he investigates how to make global teams hyper-productive and how to decrease the impact of distance to zero Thank you very much! September 13, 2017 D.M.vanSolingen@tudelft.nl - R.vanSolingen@prowareness.nl 25