The Scrum framework is often touted as a panacea for all our project ills, in reality, it is a framework within which many of the same issues are experienced, as well as bringing some more along with it. This is a presentation I gave at the Canberra Scrum User Group on Thursday 7 April 2016 at 6pm. http://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Scrum-User-Group/

1. Scrum is Disruptive in
Your Organisation
Shane Wheller CSM
Canberra Scrum User Group

3. Plan
• Agile Manifesto
• A Value Proposition of Scrum
• Value Hunting using Scrum
• Observations of Common Disruptions

4. Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working Software over comprehensive
documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we
value the items on the left more

5. A Value Proposition
• Risk inherently controlled
• Closer to the business
• Change accepted as late as possible
• Change inherently welcomed
• Self contained teams

6. Hunting the Value
• Business Benefits still need to be obtained
• Time, cost, quality diamond - quality is fixed, all
others are negotiable
• Instead of linear journey controlling scope, go on a
journey where scope is variable but quality is not
• Likely outcome is more value faster with agile
approach to change

7. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• The challenge is communicating what Scrum is and
what it is not, particularly to those that need to
know
• Breaking down misconceptions
• In essence, it’s not that we don’t need to consider
and deliver traditional work, it’s just that we think of
it in a different way

8. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• Scrum is a framework within which the Agile
Principles can be used
• Therefore, our approach is ‘different’ to traditional
thinking
• This represents change, and change can be
threatening to some

9. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• Two types of people:
• “top downers” and
• “bottom uppers”

10. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• ‘Top downers’ still think that they need to control the
projects to ensure the Project Brief is delivered and
the benefits achieved
• The old habits of waterfall are Scrum’s biggest
impediment
• Management roles need to shift to leadership by
removing impediments to ensure maximum velocity
can be reached

11. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• Effort is made to change Scrum to
fit in to the organisation
• Resist this, as all it does is
continues to mask all the
dysfunctions of the current
organisation
• It points out the dysfunctions and
doesn’t provide the answers

12. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• Reporting: You’ll be
asked for a date,
resource utilisation and
a timeline, and for really
cool traffic lights
• You can provide them,
but they’ll be invariably
out of date the next day,
so of little to no value

13. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• It’s actually harder: Iterative, incremental
development is much harder than waterfall
development; everything that was hard in waterfall,
is now hard in each iteration
• More discussion between team members to enable
the shared understanding

14. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• Testing is a point of abrasion
• Generally organisations have testing in place as a QA gate to
protect them from poor quality product delivery
• Scrum can deliver higher quality earlier, with built in ‘user
acceptance’ if the Product Owner role is functioning
• Iterative approach to ‘Done’ via Paired Programming,
Continuous Integration Testing and Test Driven
Development and Product Owner Acceptance versus the
waterfall approach to Unit, System, System Integration, User
Acceptance Testing, and Production Verification Testing

15. Observations of Common
Disruptions
• Product Owner’s are often untrained, don’t own the
budget, don’t have a vision and aren’t sufficiently
empowered to make decisions
• Organisations are often run by consensus
• Scrum is particularly appropriate for high risk,
complex and large projects

16. References
• Scrum is Hard and Disruptive, Ken Schwaber, 2006
• The Scrum Guide TM, The Definitive Guide to
Scrum: The Rules of the Game, Sutherland and
Schwaber, July 2013
• The New New Product Development Game,
Takeuchi and Nonaka, Jan-Feb 1986

17. Future Meet Ups
• Thursday 5 May 6pm - Scrum and Prince2, a
Prince2 Project Manager's Perspective
• Thursday 2 June at 6pm - Scrum “Pecha kucha” (7
Min presentations, time slots still available, see
Andrea)
• Thursday 7 July at 6pm - Making Scrum work with
Lean and Kansan
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