Scrum Evolution

Scrum has changed over time, the Scrum we see today is not how it was originally implemented for example,

• The first daily scrum reportedly took hours, not minutes! it was a sit-down not a stand up.
• The scrum masters job to find enough chairs! 
• There were no retros originally
• The original sprint length was a month, to suit the Product Owner

Scrum is very different now to when it first started, it has evolved. There are also many elements of scrum that are not mandated, but seem to somehow be enshirned in lore. 

Scrum should also evolve with the team. How you implement scrum depends on the team make up, experience and where you are on the Scrum timeline – what works for one team may not work for another, at a particular moment in time.

Best Practice or just Good/Bad Practice?

Best Practice can depend on where you are on your Agile or Scrum journey, for example, Planning Poker might be a good idea for a new team starting up, but not so important for an established team with years of experience. Over time it maybe possible to migrate to no estimates (No Estimate movement), where all User Stories are split up into equal sizes negating the need to estimate – While this maybe a good idea for an experienced team, it’s a bad idea for a new team – hence time dictates what you do when.

Scrum (and agile) is not a binary concept, it’s not one day we are not agile the next day we are, it’s a constant movement of change. Agile and Scrum need to be feed with energy, the practices need to be looked at constantly to re-enforce the practices and evaluate when its time to change to a new one. The Agile coach role is not a temporary one, it is an ongoing process of constant evaluation and probing. 

Retros benefit from change as these needed to be kept bright and varied to ensure they are not stale and just going through the motions.

Key Takeaways

• Scrum needs constant energy to keep it going
• Scrum should evolve with the team over time
• What works for one team may not work with another – Scrum is not a one size fits all

The key to scrum is indeed therefore time…