Scrumbutbut

Scrum is one of those very simple things that turns out very hard. It's basically a framework with some few rules designed in a way that makes responding to change, or creating necessary changes easier. It takes a two-days workshop and a few hundred dollars to become a Certified Scrum Master. You do get out of this session with some really good ideas on how to go about your Scrum implementation to apply back at your work environment. Some people read about Scrum on the web or a book and think this is a good idea and start using it (or some of it) to get things done.

Despite their sincere effort newcomers will skip some Scrum artifact or ceremony, due to lack of knowledge and experience, and will end up with, what came to be known as, a ScrumBut implementation. It means that they would claim that they are doing Scrum but e.g. they will not have a burndown chart, or they will not have a daily synchronisation stand up, or their iterations are 3 months long.

Another category of ScrumBut is when experienced practitioners see themselves adapting their process due to constraints imposed by the environment, their customer, legislation, etc. They have to come up with a Scrum that includes some component that they will not naturally use, or sometimes they will not have facilities, like a co-located team, that are usually present in Agile environments.

ScrumButBut is a ScrumBut that wants to become less But. It's when I'm doing ScrumBut but I'm working to implement more Scrum-recognised practices into my process. It's Scrumming the Scrum. It's inspection and adaptation being applied to my very process. It's being flexible and welcoming to my internal or external customer feedback and incorporating it into my process in a true collaboration spirit. I must be flexible to have the right to ask for flexibility. It's a believe that transformation should not occur only in the organisation, it should occur in me as a professional and in my process. It's to value individuals and iterations over processes and tools. It's recognising that attitude and values are far more important than format and rules. ScrumButBut is coming back to Scrum with all your experience and pains and renewing Scrum with Scrum itself.