Agile is a fancy word for any type of management nowadays. I practice Agile methods for already 10 years and still see people that find it fancy and exotic. Quite surprising, isn’t it?
If you ask me which is the most famous Agile approach, I would definitely say: Scrum.
Born in 1986 (not in 2008 when I started applying it) Scrum is still fancy. Its initial version targeted the development of emerging commercial products. Scrum glory results its impact on the growing IT and software development based industries.
Companies welcome newcomers that still don’t have working experience and habits. With its daily routines and rituals, Scrum facilitates the introduction of new comers, the knowledge sharing and foster the team dynamics.
So I assume Scrum will be fancy in the future just like it is now for everyone who starts building software development activities. Let’s say that:
Scrum stimulates the organizational maturity in the early maturity phases.
Why saying early maturity phases? I saw Scrum offered, even imposed to mature professionals. Some of them calls the Scrum rituals useless, others are really resistant to participate. And indeed, a mature professional is used to share the right knowledge in the right moment (daily), looks ahead (planning), continuously raises ideas for improvements (retrospective) and know how to communicate their result (review).
One step higher in the organizational structure, Scrum might not bring any fashion in mature teams. The team cohesion is a phenomenon pretty well observed, analyzed and described for at least a century. Even if not always official and visible, the mature teams have their own ways of teamwork, rules and rituals. So careful,
The rigid Scrum implemetnation can hurt the efficiency in mature teams.
When talking about Scrum in mature organization you can hear:
(AMD: A Mature Developer, 2008)
Really, why Scrum? I don’t see any benefit.
And the guy could be right since her practice might have much higher maturity level.
Please do not hurry to call AMD everyone who gives such a feedback. This could be also someone who simply does not get the point or does not want to change.
What is YFSS: Your Fancy Scrum Story?