Is Scrum for lazy project teams?
I was at a holiday party this past weekend when I began talking with a fellow guest. In a weird coincidence, we were both project managers. Naturally, we began to talk about our jobs and our experience with project management. And naturally, this topic quickly bored the other attendees of the party.
We focused the majority of the discussion on the environments in which we work. He works for a firm that is entirely waterfall in its methodology, while I work for a firm that utilizes both agile and waterfall approaches.
I began to sing the praises of agile, and Scrum in particular, to this person. I talked about how we are able to respond to customer needs quicker, adapt to changing requirements, and deliver a better product.
He stated that all of those benefits sound great, but his company would never allow a team to implement Scrum. I asked why that is. He replied that the management at his company views Scrum as being for lazy teams.
This reply upset me because I know that Scrum often receives this bad rap. Those of us who practice Scrum know that it is not for lazy teams. I explained to him that Scrum is not for lazy team for the following reasons:
- Lazy teams do not self-organize
- Lazy teams do not commit to aggressive timelines
- Lazy teams do not constantly look for ways to improve themselves and their processes
- Lazy teams do not hold themselves accountable
- Lazy teams do not respond to change in a positive manner
Scrum teams constantly do all of the above.
We continued to talk about the myth of Scrum being for lazy teams and he stated that he was going to try and convince his company into piloting a Scrum project. I told him that I would try to elicit more talking points for him to use when discussing the false myth of Scrum as the “lazy project methodology”. So, I ask you to leave a comment stating how you defend Scrum and fight the myth.
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Waterfall is for lazy teams.
- They don’t have to think about design, architecture, implementation, debug, testing and release every day of a short sprint.
- They don’t have to actually deliver something that works as a product for months or even years.
- They don’t have to help others on the team because it’s not their job.
- They can hide behind incomplete or inaccurate specifications.
- They can blame the customer for not liking the end product because the customer obviously failed to define everything correctly up front.
- They can point at QA for not catching the bug they created before it got to the customer.
- They can wait for the Team Lead to tell them what to do and point out they were just doing what they were told if what they did was the wrong thing.
- They can ignore team members they don’t like because the manager will eventually figure out how to keep them apart and avoid unpleasantness.
I’m going to stop before I get depressed.
Great post.. I ended up in the same discussion the other day. In addition I emphasized the transparancy Scrum gives not only for the team, but also for management and the clients. I would say that if management consider scrum is for lazy teams they probably have way too much confidence in their own staff and reject change in general. In my experience transitioning from waterfall to scrum we actually ended up “finding” several consultants that for years had been hiding behind their “believed skills” and not the acctual work. Of course this is not all good – and relies a lot on a management that is skilled on dealing with people, but for management it’s a way to make sure they use the “skill pool” in the best interest of the company.
Thanks for the post Chris. I find that managers typically have the attitude you describe, however the underlying meaning is lost. It isn’t that they think the teams are lazy per say, I find that they believe that Scrum doesn’t push the Teams to be more productive. In their minds, people need whips at their backs to be motivated. History has found that fear isn’t a good long-term motivator, and when people get the chance they’ll bite you back, hard. What we need is for people to motivate themselves and each other. Agile, and Scrum, allow for this to happen.
Rob – thanks for the comment. Your bring up a good point that some managers feel the need to manage their team through intimidation/fear. Thankfully, I have seen an increase in managers who are now warming up to the idea that employees actually want to do well and they they just need help succeeding.