By Prashant Pund
Do any of these statements sound familiar?
“Sure, we're using agile methods. I mean, we aren't entirely sure, but we think we're agile.”
“Well, the team conducts daily scrums, so they must be agile.”
“I have been tense since this guy introduced Scrum. Every morning I have to give a status report. It’s really taxing.”
“This fellow read something on the Internet about Scrum and said, let’s start Scrum tomorrow. I'm not worried. It's just another fad to ride out.”
“I heard there is a change in our process. The Process Group person is here to explain the new process, something called Scrum.”
If so, your organization likely is suffering from Scrum Mis-adoption Syndrome (SMS). SMS causes disinterest, failures to deliver, and profound distrust. The best way to treat it? Prevent it from happening in the first place.
A successful Scrum adoption requires a profound transformation of the organization. This change will be felt at the team level, yes, but will ultimately affect all layers of the organization. This then begs the question, How can I, being at the level of PM/Lead, bring in such a transformation? Shouldn’t it come from the top? The answer is both Yes and No. Yes, because indeed the transformation needs to have buy-in and support from the top. No, because a top-down approach is not sufficient. As Mike Cohn puts it, “Change is not top-bottom or (emphasis added) bottom-up; it’s both." In view of this, here is the approach I suggest to those who are trying to transition to an agile methodology such as Scrum.
