SCRUM-DIFFICULT TO MASTER, WHY?

 today’s software development approach, the concept of Scrum is most popular. Not a measured data but based on experience I can say more then 80% organization or development team talk about Agile Scrum and want to or pretend to follow Agile-Scrum.

We all know that Scrum is

1.       Lightweight

2.       Simple to Understand

3.       DIFFICULT TO MASTER

 So here we will discuss why it is said that Scrum is difficult to master?

To understand why scrum is difficult to master we should walkthrough what are changes or learning required to implement scrum. It will cover why Scrum is difficult to master.

1.       Organizational Transformation:  If we want to start Scrum then one of the first thing required is Organizational Transformation. And this is one of the key reasons as well for mastering scrum.

         Organization have its own Silos. For implementation of scrum breaking down silos or stovepipes in Organizations is required. Silos may be defined as groups of employees that tend to work as autonomous units within an organization.

         Scrum require continuous collaboration and partnership between development team and business users. For Scrum there is no hierarchy and entire scrum team is responsible for success and failure. It is very important to put business and development in one product group.

2.       Requirement of Judgement and Skill: Scrum model is based on empirical process that is desired solution and process to produce that solution require continuous change/adjustment truly based on findings as the project is in progress. For this skill and judgment required which can be achieved with coaching. Problem are is many team/people do the scrum mechanically without having any understanding the principles of scrum and it is not successful.

3.       Roles of Team Member: Role of team member in scrum is much more complex than typical traditional role during software development team. Example a developer in a scrum team is not just a developer that is writing the code instead they have to participate in planning , estimating along with managing there own work as well as integrating there work with other team members which will produce an overall solution.

4.       Understanding Responsibility: The Product owner in a scrum team is one person not someone who head the team. No one is allowed to instruct development team to work from a different set of priorities. Stakeholders who are powerful and influential  are often have their own saying and they strongly derail/oppose any attempt to take away there freedom. Team also need to be self-organize as per the principal of Agile.

 

 

Each of the Scrum practices is simple and easy to understand. The real challenge is to grasp them in totality. It requires synthesis, not analysis. It requires a mind which is open to explore experiment, learn as well as unlearn.