Succeeding with Agile

Best Practices Are Dangerous

With most organizational change, after someone figures out the right or best way to do something, that way of doing it is captured as a “best practice” and shared with everyone else. For some types of work, collecting and reusing best practices is a tremendous aid to the change effort. An organization that is selling a product to a new type of customer may, for example, capture best practices for overcoming objections from potential customers. When transitioning to Scrum, however, collecting best practices can be dangerous.

Like sirens singing to us from the rocks, best practices tempt us to relax and stop the effort of continuous improvement that is essential to Scrum. Taiichi Ohno, originator of the Toyota Production ...