Why Scrum just didn't work...
In my last article, I spoke about how I was afraid to accepted failure until I finally did. It was that moment that I could finally reflect on my implementation of Scrum. I'm going to explain why implementing Scrum just didn't work and highlight some red flags along the way, so that you can avoid the mistakes that I made.
In my attempt to implement Scrum, I persisted in the implementation for over 14 months before throwing in the towel. I admit that it sounds like a long time however it was not a waste. The output was still visible, but we just never improved on estimating delivery so some features would span across three or four sprints. It was not until a few weeks ago that I agreed to stop doing "Scrum-but" and just have a prioritized Kanban board. It was after the time that we stopped doing Scrum that I could finally reflect on the situation.
One the big red flags that I could point out is that our team doesn't fit the ideal image of a team using Scrum. Typically in Scrum, it is recommended to "keep your teams small"¹, however, at one point my team had been around 22 individuals. We have reduced to two teams of roughly a dozen people but we still struggle with the problems of a large team. The size of the team directly affects each team member's accountability and makes it difficult to ensure ownership of tasks.
Another not ideal situation for a team using Scrum is that we have a large number of supported features that each of the divided teams "owns". Although we require a lot of cross communication for the features to be released, we sometimes struggle with the "absolute alignment of purpose"¹. We constantly have many projects that overlap and struggle to finish that 90%. The lack of alignment to finish the projects lead our team to constant carry over issues and tasks.
I could go further and further down the rabbit hole of what we should have done, but I know that it wouldn't be beneficial for anyone. I am glad however that I could analyze the situation now that it has past so I could better implement in the future. This does not mean the end for the implementation of Scrum with this team, but rather some time to find a better focus and structure to support Scrum.
tl;dr
Not all teams are made for Scrum. Sometimes it's important to stop, evaluate, and come back to Scrum.
Works Cited
[1] Jeff Sutherland and J. J. Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. New York: Crown Business, 2014.
