Thread by @RonJeffries

"Scrum is a lens. Work is done under the lens, not by the lens".

Scrum's foundation is "Inspect and Adapt", the notion that impediments to success will be identified ... and that the organization will remove them.

I'm puzzled about what often happens instead.

1/10

When we hear of a Dark- or Dimming-Scrum situation, we see the same issues again and again. A common one is failing to complete all the planned work, Sprint after Sprint. The team themselves point this out. Why have they not fixed the problem?

2/10

If you're not getting all 37 things done, it seems intuitively obvious to this casual observer that you should take on less work next time, rinse, repeat until you are usually getting it all done. Maybe the right number is 36. Probably it's 15 or 5.

3/10

Is it not clear to everyone that if we aren't getting everything done, we have too much to do? You'd think so.

Now, I've told the story elsewhere about the executive who, when told the team was "behind", said "Well, we'll have to whip the ponies harder, won't we?"

4/10

I could have told him right then that it wouldn't work -- probably any of us could. But even if they did try more whipping, surely they'd see it wasn't working.

Why didn't they try something else? Why did they keep trying to apply approaches that had never worked?

5/10

Nothing will work very well if you use approaches like pony-whipping. Scrum, at least, will tell you within a couple of weeks whether pony-whipping works.

There's a saying, "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast". Its origin is in the military, and it is commonly used in martial arts, to emphasize both slow practice, and smooth unhurried execution.

I don't like to use notions from the world of violence, but this one has real merit.

6/10

When we whip the ponies, they'll rush. They'll take every shortcut they can find. They'll skimp on testing. They'll leave cruft in the code and won't improve it once it seems to work.

These things will slow them down, almost literally tomorrow.

7/10

What if we take on only as much work as we're sure we can do - or even less - or even just do one story at a time - and take the time to work smoothly and cleanly?

We inject fewer defects and we keep the code clean. Clean defect-free code is the fastest code to work with.

8/10

Surely almost every team who is failing to deliver their forecasted results realizes that it's the forecast that's wrong.

Why don't they fix the forecast? Why don't they make changes to the way they work?

I honestly do not know.

9/10

Scrum, or any Agile approach, or any approach at all, can't work if you don't both observe what's going on, and improve it.

Many Scrum teams clearly see what's going on, yet fail to improve.

Can you tell me why that is, and how to help?

10/10

@threadreaderapp unroll