Common Mistakes and Misunderstandings

or, How to Fail with Scrum

Error: Not a self-directed team; managers or Scrum Master direct or organize the team — The urge may be strong during an iteration to tell or suggest to team members how to work, or solve a problem. Many managers are used to an emphasis on directing and planning, rather than their role in Scrum: To quickly remove blocks, provide resources, act as a firewall to the rest of the organization, and otherwise stay out of the way. This is especially true for the Scrum Master during the Scrum Meeting, when there is a natural tendency for the team to look to a leader for direction and solutions.

Error: No daily update of the Sprint Backlog by members or daily tracker — Self-explanatory.

Error: New work added to iteration or individual — In a sea of constant change, some stability is required. Not changing the requirements for an iteration, once begun, is Scrum's point of control.

Error: Product Owner isn't involved or doesn't decide — Scrum is customer driven; the Product Owner needs to decide what the Product Backlog priorities are and choose the requirements for the next iteration.

Error: No Sprint Review — Feedback and adaptation drive Scrum; the demo and review are needed to inform the customers, so they can steer the next iteration.

Error: Many masters — Scrum requires one voice on the Product Backlog requirements, priorities, and work for the next iteration: the Product Owner.

Error: Documentation is bad — Scrum isn't anti-documentation; discussion of project workproducts is simply outside the scope of its definition. As with all agile methods , non-code workproducts are expected to add real value, rather than be created for the sake of following a process formula.

Error: Design or diagramming is bad — Scrum is pragmatic rather than doctrinaire on the team's approach to design: If they find value in some pre-programming design or diagramming work during an iteration, it's done.

Error: Full team (including customers and management) not briefed in Scrum and its values — Self-explanatory.

Error: Scrum Meeting too long or unfocused — Keep it below 20 minutes, and focused on the Scrum questions.

Error: Iteration doesn't end in an integrated and tested partial product — An iteration doesn't just finish on the end date. The goal is that all the software has been integrated, tested, and baselined.

Error: Each iteration ends in a production release — Although a Scrum iteration may end in a production release, it is not a requirement. It may require many iterations before readiness.

Error: Predictive planning; PERT chart planning — As with all IID methods, it is a misunderstanding to create a plan laying out exactly how many iterations there will be for a long project and what will occur in each, or to create a PERT chart identifying many tasks , their order and estimated duration.

You Know You Didn't Understand Scrum When...

Some of the key misunderstandings expressed as a checklist:

• You think a manager or Scrum Master should tell the team what to do, or how to solve its problems.

• Customers are not involved in each iteration, not prioritizing requirements, not attending each demo, and are not choosing the highest business value set for the next iteration.

• New requirements or extra-project tasks are added to team members during an iteration.

• You create a plan laying out how many iterations there will be for the project, and what will occur in each, and think you can enforce it.

• You create a PERT chart or a plan of dependent, ordered tasks, with estimated durations.