After working in Scrum for over a year, I find myself in violent agreement with every point in the article. For me, Scrum has always been nothing more than an

After working in Scrum for over a year, I find myself in violent agreement with every point in the article. For me, Scrum has always been nothing more than an “Agile Bootstrap”. The core idea within it is very simple: try something and examine the results. Stick with what works and try alternatives for what doesn’t. Repeat. And, above all, learn. So Scrum starts you off with a list of practices to get going with. The whole litany of backlogs, story points, sprints, daily stand ups and retrospectives is nothing more than a vocabulary - a pattern language for stakeholders. It’s got pros and cons - a good way to bring people together but it needs to be recognised as a crutch and ditched quickly before the team comes to treat it as an article of faith to be defended at all costs. And this is where so many agile coaches fail in my (limited) experience. When I was undergoing scrum training, it was hugely disappointing to hear colleagues asking questions of the trainer along the lines of “Can a scrum master multi-task among teams like an anaesthetist in a hospital?”. Or “What does Scrum advocate when a production incident requires someone in the team to drop out and assist?”. Or “Can we have scrums of scrums?”. The answer in every case is the same: try something - anything. See how it goes and decide whether to apply that approach again in future.