Scrum For Dummies

Chapter 19

Ten Pitfalls to Avoid

In This Chapter

Avoiding common mistakes

Implementing sound practices

Scrum teams can make a number of common but serious mistakes when implementing scrum. This chapter provides an overview of some typical problems and ways for scrum teams to turn them around.

As you may notice, many of these pitfalls are related to lack of organizational support, lack of training, and falling back on old project management practices. If your company invests in transition support and supports positive changes, if the project team is trained, and if scrum teams make an active commitment to upholding the scrum framework and agile values, you’ll have a successful transition.

Faux Scrum (Cargo Cult Agile and Double Work Agile)

Sometimes organizations will say that they are “doing scrum.” They may go through some of the scrum events, but they haven’t embraced the principles of agile and are ultimately creating waterfall deliverables and products under the false scrum titles. This is sometimes called cargo cult agile and is a sure path to avoiding the benefits of scrum.

Trying to use scrum in addition to waterfall processes, documents, and meetings is another faux scrum ...