This document summarizes a presentation by Tom Mellor on adopting agile and Scrum practices in China. Mellor is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Scrum Alliance and introduced Scrum to a team of 5,000 people at his company. He discusses some common problems teams face, the core values and principles of agile according to the Agile Manifesto, and how Scrum works. He also outlines reasons why Scrum may not work and signs that it is not working well. The document concludes with a discussion on whether culture is the biggest obstacle to adopting agile in China.

1. Agile and Scrum in China:
Can It Work?
Will It Work?
Tom Mellor, Scrum Alliance

2. Speaker Introduction
Chair of the Board of Directors of the Scrum
Alliance
Employer: State Farm Ins Cos. (USA)
Title: Agile Coach and Project Manager
Introduced Scrum and agile development into the
IT Dept (5000+ people) in 2003
Certified Scrum Trainer, Certified Scrum Product
Owner, Certified Scrum Professional, Certified
ScrumMaster
Worked on and coached over 25 Scrum projects

3. Speaker Confessions
 30+ years in business with 8+ in IT as a
business analyst and project manager
 Wrote code in 1978 (Basic and Fortran);
returned in 2005 to university to learn java
 Have been around development long enough to
fundamentally understand its concepts (not true
for me for the Chinese language)
 A bit anxious that I might receive many  for
my talk since it isn’t technical
 That is a risk I am willing to take because I feel
the message I bring is important

4. Some Common Project and
Team Problems (Nontechnical)
 Despite adoption of Scrum and/or other agile
processes, the business and team(s) still do not
often communicate well
 Organization management does not honor the
difference between knowledge work and
physical labor
 Nontechnical people believe all developers
have equal skill level and developers tend to
establish a ―pecking order‖ and are not inclined
to do cooperative work such as pair
programming

5. Some Common Project and
Team Problems (Nontechnical)
 People believe we do magic and that we can
predict time and cost up front with precision
even though we deal with a large amount of
uncertainty and ambiguity
 Developers know that Test Driven Development
is good, but they resist doing it because they
believe it slows them down too much
 The development is done emergency room
style – and developers do not know who to
please

6. The Root of Agile Created in
2001: The Agile Manifesto
www.agilemanifesto.org
The 4 Values
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it
and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on
the left more.

7. The 12 Principles of the Agile
Manifesto
1. 我们的最高目标是，通过尽早和持续地交付有价值的软件来满足客户。
2. 欢迎对需求提出变更——哪怕是在项目开发后期。要善于利用需求变更，帮助
客户获得竞争优势。
3. 要经常性地交付可用的软件，周期从几周到几个月不等，交付时间越短越好。
4. 项目过程中，业务人员与开发人员必须在天天一起工作。
5. 要善于激励项目人员，给他们以所需要的环境和支持，并相信他们能够完成任
务。
6. 无论是团队内还是团队间，最有效的沟通方法是面对面的交谈。
7. 可用的软件是衡量进度的主要指标。
8. 敏捷过程提倡可持续的开发。项目方、开发人员和用户应该能够保持长期稳定
的进展速度。
9. 对技术的精益求精以及对设计的不断完善将提升敏捷性。
10. 要做到简洁，即尽最大可能减少不必要的工作。这是一门艺术。
11. 最佳的架构、需求和设计出自于自组织的团队。
12. 团队要定期反省如何能够做到更有效，并相应地调整团队的行为。

8. Scrum In a Picture

9. Scrum Defined
A (very) light weight work organization
framework with a minimal set of rules
based in empirical process theory where
product is delivered iteratively and
incrementally in 30 days or less.
It is suitable for technical and
nontechnical product development.

10. The Three Scrum Roles
 The Product Owner: the person responsible
for representing the customer and end user
and for prioritizing work
 The ScrumMaster: not a traditional project
manager, but rather a servant to the team
whose job is to remove impediments (noise)
and coach the team in the use of Scrum to be
as productive as possible
 The Team: cross-functional group of 5 to 12
people

11. The Three Scrum Documents
 Product Backlog –prioritized list of features
that the Product Owner desires
 Sprint Backlog – list of tasks needed to get
chosen stories completed in an iteration
 Simple Progress Charts – called Burn Up or
Burn Down Charts

12. The Four Scrum Ceremonies
 Sprint Planning
 Daily Scrum
 Sprint Review
 Sprint Retrospective

13. Why Scrum Works
 Demands quality working software be delivered
quickly
 Employs queuing theory and other lean principles
(e.g. removal of waste, JIT delivery, etc.)
 Leverages the high performance of self-organizing
teams that decide how work should be done
 Involves and satisfies the customer by having the
customer prioritize and approve the work in regular
intervals
 Seeks to minimize technical risk (and other risks) by
encapsulating development into a time box

14. Why Scrum Works
 Employs continuous improvement using periods of
reflection (hansei and kaizen)
 Uses the principle of inspect and adapt to evolve
software to a satisfying state
 Teams can use the scientific process to explore
solutions
 One person (the ScrumMaster) is responsible for
removing noise or seeing that noise is removed and
otherwise serves the team as needed
 One person (the Product Owner) prioritizes desired
functionality and represents the customer

15. Three Guiding Principles of
Scrum
 Ask the Team
 Inspect and Adapt
 Deliver fast

16. Some Reasons (But Not All)
Why Scrum Does Not Work
 Cultural intolerance and lack of trust
 Ineffective (poor??) or absent software
practices and craftsmanship
 Poor (or no) communication within the team
and/or between the Product Owner and the
team
 People working on too many things
 Project managers get in the way
 Bad management practices

17. When Scrum Works, But Not
Very Well (Smells)
 The Sprint is not honored
 Outsiders interfere with the process
 Lack of commitment
 Team doesn’t seek to improve
 ScrumMaster becomes a project manager
and assigns work and expects
 The Burn Down Chart becomes a Gantt
Chart
 Team members say ―That’s not my job.‖

18. When Scrum Works, But Not
Very Well (Smells)
 Done is not defined or misunderstood and
technical debt piles on
 Team delivery pace fluctuates widely
 No attention to continuous improvement by
the team
 Team dwells on problems rather than fixing
them
 Rewards focus on individuals, not teams

19.  Add text here.
 To add a picture, chart,
or other content in the
right column, click the
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“Scrum doesn't
appropriate icon.
To add a slide, click
New Slide on the
work in China!”
Insert menu, or press
CTRL+M.
With regards to Bas Vodde, CST

20. Lesson 2: Wrap-up
 Summarize important points.
 Allow time for questions.
“Agile could work in
China because it is
communist country”

21. Is Culture The Biggest Obstacle
to Adoption of Agile (in China)?
 Certified Scrum Trainer Bas Vodde from
Singapore presented this in Shanghai at the
recent Scrum Gathering
 His caution: generalizations about culture are
typically untrue!!
 He developed the Cultural Agility Index based
upon assessing countries based upon survey
feedback using Hoftede’s Power Distance
Index and the Agile Manifesto

22. Is Culture The Biggest Obstacle
to Adoption of Agile (in China)?
The Power Distance Index:
the extent to which less powerful
members of organizations and
institutions (like the family)
tolerate and expect that power is
distributed unequally
(Agile promotes low power distance)

23. Is Culture The Biggest Obstacle
to Adoption of Agile (in China)?

24. Lesson 3: Objectives
 List the intended outcomes for this training
session.
 Each objective should be concise, should
contain a verb, and should have a
measurable result.

25. Lesson 3: Content

26. Cultural Agility Index
Dimensions
1. Power Index 1. China 56; US 16
2. Individualism 2. China 14; US 68
versus Collectivism 3. China 56; US 50
3. Masculinity versus 4. China 6; US 13
Femininity 5. China 65; US 22
4. Uncertainty
Avoidance
5. Long Term
Orientation

27. Vodde’s Composite Agility
Ranking
 List important points from each lesson.
 Provide resources for more information on
subject.
 List resources on this slide.
 Provide handouts with additional resource
material.

28. Bas’s Assessments
 Prepare a quiz or challenge to assess how
much information participants learned.
 Survey participants to see if they found the
training beneficial.

29. Bas’s Assessments

30. Bas’s Assessments
 Prepare a quiz or challenge to assess how
much information participants learned.
 Survey participants to see if they found the
training beneficial.

31. Scrum and Agile In China:
Some Conclusions
 Can Scrum and agile work in China?
Vodde presents a compelling argument that
―Yes, it can.‖
 Will Scrum and agile work in China? Only
time will tell; success will be based upon how
well companies are willing to adapt.
 QUESTIONS?