5 signs Scrum is a terrible choice for you

Scrum is 17 years old, despite that it still stays one of the most popular agile framework. But popularity does not mean that it works for everyone. So if you notice one or more of the signs below, probably you should reconsider your workflow.

Popularity does not mean that it works for everyone1. You think developers are the main source of innovations

Scrum is based on the strict process. And it also very heavy in terms of management. Usually, a team must have Product Owners, Scrum Master and TeamLead. In such borders, Scrum disallows developers to make any product decisions and most of the time treat them as code slappers.

2. You hate Scrum meetings

Don’t get me wrong. Meetings are essential to the development process. But these meetings have to lead to proper decisions, last as long as it’s enough to make these decisions and involve only persons, responsible for that.

But I’m sick of daily standups!

Still, standup meetings are a good way to make developers act more honestly and procrastinate less. But if your team is distributed or working in different time zones, you can use chatbots or tools like Standuply or GetAlly and not waste time on running several meeting per day.

Meetings have to lead to proper decisions and last as long as it’s enough to make these decisions3. You’re bad on estimates

As all humans. We always underestimate things. And all attempts to plan and predict software development process fails because of that. Tasks take as long as it should take, no matter how many story points you set on the ticket.

The task take as long as it should take, no matter how many story points you set on the ticketRed sprint

I bet you saw a picture like this already. When planning a sprint, you’re agreed on the set of stories. But very often stories escalate. Or we discover a challenge. Or we can’t meet external dependency. So we push some chunk of work into a next sprint. And then do it again. And again…

4. Your environment changes too fastBurn-out chart

And if you saw the above picture, I have bad news for you. Your environment changes quickly or you don’t follow Scrum rules. If you’re working in a growing startup I bet you know what I’m talking about. Nowadays, technologies like Serverless or feature flags allow to iterate quickly and apply validated learning much faster. Faster than 2 weeks sprint lasts.

5. You care about quality

The main purpose of a sprint is to deliver a set of features on schedule. And of course, under pressure, developers cut angles to achieve the deadline.Scrum does not have any quality metrics and it leads to bugs, velocity drop, and, as a result, bad customer experience. I’m sure, it is not your goal.

Developers cut angles to achieve the deadline

Ok, I have such things. What am I supposed to do?

First of all, don’t be upset. There’re no reasons to break up with Scrum yet. It is actually a great framework. But in certain environments it requires calibration. Try to simplify the process or use a mix of different approaches. Mix Scrum and Kanban or borrow something from extreme programming. Use whatever helps you to achieve the goal. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

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How does Scrum work for you? Leave your thought and feedback in comments.

5 signs Scrum is a terrible choice for you was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.