Do you wish to adopt Scrum in your large organisation? The odds aren’t in your favour
Countless organisations have failed before you
Countless organisations have failed before you
Organisations always look for ways to excel. Many are driven by the ambition to disrupt the market. Others wish to outperform their competitors and be the top dog. Whatever the reason, organisations always look for ways to improve.
Enter Scrum. Since the turn of the century, nothing has had an appeal as Agile. And the most prominent example of Agile is Scrum.
The promises of Scrum are magnificent. And totally in line with what organisations wish to achieve. Scrum promises:
Higher-value products as you focus on what matters.
Early and continuous delivery of value, every Sprint.
Less waste as you ignore things that don’t add value.
Flexibility to change the course with new insights.
Better collaboration with stakeholders.
Better teamwork.
Continuous improvement.
On top of that, a more fun working environment.
And if this isn’t enough to convince organisations, we have these factors that organisations expect from Scum:
Scrum means faster delivery: “Twice the work in half the time”.
Scrum means higher productivity.
Scrum means higher predictability.
It is no surprise many organisations adopted Scrum. In itself, it is amusing to see how companies wish to outperform their competitors by using the most popular framework, jumping on the bandwagon. A company that mindlessly adopts Scrum is a follower, not a leader. But I digress.
Because what is worse than being a mere follower by adopting Scrum, is the fact that organisations are set up for failure by doing so. Scrum isn’t a framework you simply add to your organisation.
To be successful with Scrum, you need to be willing and committed to making radical changes. And everyone needs to be on board. These are challenges.
Let’s start peeling to see how many layers this onion has.
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The challenges
Scrum is disruptive for many organisations. Especially organisations with a traditional mindset on delivery and output. These traditional organisations have their work cut out for them.
Predictability vs complexity
An organisation that decides to adopt Scrum has to embrace complexity. They need to realise that today's fast-changing, fiercely competitive world calls for the capacity to build, measure and learn fast.
Long ago, life was simple. Organisations could meticulously plan the creation and rollout of their new product:
“Under the old approach, a product development process moved like a relay race, with one group of functional specialists passing the baton to the next group.’ — Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka, 1986
Takeuchi and Nonaka are the grandfathers of Scrum. Already in 1986, they told us the old way of creating products didn’t suffice anymore. They presented “The New New Product Development Game”. Nine years later, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber took inspiration from the paper and created Scrum.
35 years ago two Japanese visionaries already called the end of predictability in product management.
But in 2021, this still hasn’t reached many high ranking people in traditional companies.
The idea that creating new products is predictable needs to disappear from the organisation. If this doesn’t happen, Scrum is set up for failure.
Delivery vs discovery
The organisation needs to work with terms like discovery, outcome and impact. Delivering items according to detailed plans is no guarantee for success. Organisations can be super predictable in their delivery of items. But if they don't generate the desired outcome, if they don't have the desired impact, they still fail.
The journey towards the outcomes is one of discovery. Every stakeholder in the company should realise and embrace this. They need to use this language towards their colleagues and their customers. The progress to the outcome is what matters. And the impact it brings.
As logical as this may seem, still many organisations struggle with this. They can’t see beyond the output as a measure for success. This is why this is another insurmountable obstacle for numerous organisations to be successful with Scrum.
Then there’s the idea that Scrum is first and foremost a delivery framework, helping to grapple with complexity. This is rooted in the way Scrum was presented to the world in 1995. This first edition of Scrum very much had a software delivery mindset.
The most important issue to address was to ensure the teams delivered the software according to expectations. Scrum acknowledged how difficult it is to build the software as requested while working with proxies and hand-offs. This is where topics like cross-functional teams and direct communication with the stakeholders came into play.
But these days, the topic of delivering according to expectations isn’t an issue anymore. Releasing software frequently becomes easier every year. In the nineties, you’d release once every quarter. Releasing every month was a major step.
These days, many organisations release daily or multiple times a day. This allows for quick verification of whether the team understood the request correctly. The major issue, however, is a different one.
Instead of focusing on delivery, the attention should be on the creation of value. This means the team should collaborate with their stakeholders to seek the best ways to maximize the value of their product.
This product thinking requires a different mindset and approach throughout the company. But if the focus remains to be on delivery, Scrum will not bring what it promises.
Longer-term planning and empiricism
The next potential stumbling block is the illusion of control with long term planning based upon upfront analysis. This does not work in highly volatile, complex environments.
Often Scrum Teams understand this. Even their direct stakeholders may have an understanding of empiricism, where you set goals and allow for regular course corrections to stay focused on the goals. Yes, even the customers and users may know and appreciate empiricism.
But this doesn't guarantee success. Because as long as important deciders within the company, often at a higher level in the organisation, don’t understand it, they may still enforce procedures and regulations that cripple the effectiveness of the Scrum Teams.
The organisational structure vs collaboration
Many companies have a hierarchical structure. On top of that, the structure consists of silos. Architects, sales, operations, infrastructure, finance (for example) are all isolated bubbles in a grandiose organisational tree. Silo thinking is prominent.
Often, the organisational structure limits Scrum Teams to collaborate with their stakeholders.
Teams should at the very least align — but preferably collaborate. Otherwise, they will not be able to understand each other fully. They will be set up for misunderstandings and inferior products.
If organisations fail to have the people who work on a product together, they will not profit from Scrum.
Contradictory appraisal incentives vs shared objectives
Another major problem is how people are incentivized by their yearly objectives. Often, these objectives contradict the objectives of the Scrum Team.
Aspects of contradictory objectives are:
triggers to show you are senior to or better than others within the team;
objectives that have nothing to do with the team;
promoting behaviour that doesn’t match with the goals of a Scrum Team.
Besides this issue, we also see different departments having contradictory objectives. As an example, Sales may have objectives that collide with the objectives of the Scrum Team. They may be triggered to promise things to clients the Scrum Team can’t possibly achieve.
In an organisation that wishes to implement Scrum, it is important to have everyone on the same page. You do this by having shared objectives for everyone.
If Agile is implemented without changing these contradictory incentives, departments, teams and individuals will not work together to achieve their goals. And Scrum will fail to bring you the promised results.
Decisions by top management vs team level
In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. — Scrum Guide 2020. This means that the team needs to make decisions based on what they observe.
These decisions can be drastic. Teams could decide to invest in a different part of the product. Teams could decide to invest more than anticipated. They could also decide to stop working on the product.
But many traditional companies don’t allow the teams to make these decisions. This power is with top management and/or finance. They call the shots, although they often don’t have the insights to make these decisions.
Top management and finance should find new ways to guide the teams. They should move away from decisions on output and specific products. Instead, they should set objectives and trust the teams to make the right decisions to achieve these objectives. Without this leeway, teams will not benefit from Scrum.
Hiring, evaluation and promotion on technical skills only
Then there’s the hiring and promotion policy. When a company wishes to adopt Agile thinking, they should understand this is a crucial trait for their people.
This trait of Agile thinking is important for everyone. For the people that are part of the Scrum Teams, but also for their stakeholders. Everyone should know what it means to work in a complex environment. Everyone should understand that this requires a different response compared to traditional command and control.
As long as organisations continue to hire, evaluate and promote people on technical skills only, ignoring the traits of an agile mindset, they will continue to throw spanners in the works of the Scrum Teams. They will fail to profit fully from Scrum.
Daunting, but essential
I just discussed many ways for organisations to fail with their Scrum adoption. All of them are uphill battles to overcome. It may feel daunting, but I believe companies have no choice but to address them.
These issues aren’t only prerequisites to work with Scrum. Scrum is nothing more than a framework. No, it is far bigger than that. If organisations want to thrive in the complex world that we live in, they need to be able to learn and adapt fast.
The traditional organisational structure, management styles and delivery methodologies don’t work anymore. They are too rigid and sluggish.
Organisations have a choice. Do they continue to cling to their traditional ways or do they make a radical change, from bottom to top? I do wonder if this is actually a choice though.
Because without making the change, others companies will take their place. As they WILL focus on the outcome and the impact of their products. They will make traditional organisations obsolete.
There are no easy answers and shortcuts. Organisations tend to adopt SAFe because it fits their structure. Maarten Dalmijn superbly explains why this doesn’t work.
If you wish to see how you could start with the outcome as the primary target, I suggest my own article on the topic.