Agile – How to get the team back on track for SCRUM/Agile

agilescrum

There was a company developing software product. They had adopted SCRUM as agile method for entire development department incl. programmers, testers and analysts. It had been working grand for them in early months. However later things started to revert, enthusiasm cooled down and slowly people drifted back into their usual habits. The sprint became 6-8 weeks long, daily stand ups became weekly status updates around the table with bug count parade, scrum master became just a badge rotated between team members like a hot potato, product owner disengaged and lost the ownership of the backlog, and so on.

My question for you, fellow agile practitioners, is how to regain the SCRUM principles in such situation? What could the team members who still believed and care do? What are the best steps for development manager to take in such situation in order to get the team back on track for SCRUM/Agile?

Best Answer

Read this excellent article from Ron Jeffries and you will understand what needs to be done.

If you want to do Scrum, you have to follow the rules. If you don't follow the rules, it's not Scrum. And you shouldn't expect it to work.

There is plenty of space in Scrum to adapt the rules to the local team, but only once the basics have been mastered. This sounds like a prime example of a group of people who decided to alter the rules before they truly understood what they were doing. The principle of Shu-Ha-Ri applies here (and in many other places).