Identifying how Scrum can break down

Scrum is hard, much harder than it looks from a simple review of the Scrum Guide and memorization of its empirical process control foundations and product-oriented team structures, events, and artifacts. It's even more challenging to scale Scrum across a large product or as an organization-wide implementation.

In this section, you will come to understand that there are innumerable pitfalls that can lead to Scrum implementation failures, both at the product and organizational levels, and how to resolve these issues at the start. Each subsection addresses a particular issue but also provides a discussion on how the organization can avoid or at least minimize the problems.

Lacking executive sponsorship

Executive-level support is a critical success factor for any Scrum implementation. Because Scrum is ultimately about changing the values and the principles that guide the organization, a move to implement Scrum on any scale will run headfirst into impediments created by the organization's culture. Only the most senior executives have the power and authority to remove these impediments.

For example, Scrum requires a movement away from functional departments to product-oriented teams that are self-organizing, self-contained, and autonomous in their efforts to create the highest possible value at the lowest possible cost. The effect is that Scrum eliminates hierarchical organizational structures while changing employee and management positions, roles, and responsibilities. Instead, fully empowered Product Owners supported by their dedicated Scrum Teams replace the bloated bureaucracies of the traditional bureaucratic organizational structures.

Scrum also changes product life cycle development processes to release new Increments of customer valued functionality frequently, forcing the streamlining of all product life cycle development and operations-oriented processes. The streamlining requires more effective communications and collaboration between organizations that previously operated as individual silos. The efforts to streamline all development and operations activities will force the integration of business processes.

Other critical business processes eventually must follow suit. For example, marketing AD campaigns and promotions will have shorter life cycles. Sales organizations must stay current with released product capabilities, features and functions, and the specific customers targeted with each new release. Frequent releases impact product delivery and consulting partner programs, including training and support requirements. When the software is part of a more extensive system, device, or equipment, the changes affect the organization's supply chain partners and associated processes.

So, to recap, Scrum implementations at a project or product development team level have impacts across the organization and its delivery and supply chain partners. The impediments faced by the Scrum Team go beyond their scope of work and authority to address, and, for that reason, executive-level sponsorship is vital. Only a chief or Line of Business (LOB) executive has the authority to work through the many organizational issues that will impede the effectiveness of the Scrum Team.

The chief or LOB executive may delegate their authority situationally. But they cannot delegate their authority if they don't know what the issues and impediments are. They must stay informed and engaged in making Scrum work, no matter the scale of the Scrum implementation.

Failing to obtain buy-in

Just because the chief executive is supportive and directing the change to Scrum doesn't mean everyone else in the organization has the same commitments. The lack of organizational buy-in is likely the number one issue the enterprise Scrum implementation team will face. A corporate mandate without proper preparation, communications, early success, and ultimately lack of buy-in will virtually guarantee Scrum implementation failures and delays.

For one thing, organization-wide implementations of Scrum requires major reorganizations, away from hierarchical and functional departments, and to streamlined, product-oriented, and loosely coupled Scrum Teams. Individuals, particularly those in middle management roles, will feel threatened if they don't see a useful role for them and they believe their jobs and compensation are at risk. Yet these are the very people the business needs to buy into the change. If they don't buy in, they will resist the change.

Also, change is scary. However, the odds of achieving early successes improve when the organization stages the roll-out of Scrum through a series of pilot engagements, implemented by the organization's most enthusiastic innovators and early adopters. The odds of success increase, even more, when individuals in other functional groups see an opportunity for them in the change.

There is an adage that says success breeds success. Part of the success comes from hiring people who want to achieve great things. But another critical factor is that most people want to be part of something successful. The successes of the innovators and early adopters generate the enthusiasm required to move the early majority, late majority, and laggards to change and adopt the new Scrum paradigm eventually.

Lacking an agile mindset

Individuals across the organization must develop an agile mindset. Unfortunately, achieving an agile mindset is not all that simple. You cannot merely follow the rules of Scrum to achieve agility. The values and principles of agile must guide decisions made within the Scrum framework and not by the prescriptive rules of Scrum. The Scrum Guide implements few rules and those that exist connect Scrum's roles, events, and artifacts, guiding the relationships and interactions between them.

agile is not a prescriptive methodology with specific rules to follow. Instead, agility is a philosophy expressed as a core set of 4 values and 12 principles. Before an agile framework, such as Scrum, can be implemented, the organization must understand and embrace the core values and principles of agile. Then, and only then, can they begin to figure out how to go about achieving Agility.

agile has a widescale impact on the organization, as identified in the previous two subsections. Ultimately, the culture must change. And since organizational culture is driven by the collective views, objectives, and experiences of its people, culture can only be changed by the people who make up the organization. And that process takes time and work. If a chief executive wants to change the culture, they must generally accomplish the following tasks in roughly this order:

Failing to invest

Another vital part of the Scrum implementation preparation is to ensure the organization has the skills, infrastructure, and resources to support the products and Scrum Teams. The implementation of Scrum involves a reinvention of organizational structures, behaviors, and work environments. More substantial investments are required to support enterprise-scale Scrum implementations.

The Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Scrum Teams will take time to develop their skills in Scrum. I'll discuss training issues in a separate subsection. However, the organization also needs to provide access to individuals who are already trained and skilled in Scrum. Such resources may already exist within the organization. But, in most cases, the organization may need to hire outside consultants to help to guide them through the implementation process.

The organization may choose to create a Scrum Center of Excellence (CoE) to support, coach, and mentor the newly installed product development teams, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners. An Executive-level enterprise Scrum Master (ESM), must be installed to work through organizational issues, for example, impediments that require executive-level decision-making and investment authorities. When multiple divisions are involved in the enterprise Scrum implementation, each division should have a dedicated ESM to support their efforts.

The ESMs may establish Scrum Teams solely dedicated to removing organizational-level impediments. Each ESM creates a backlog of prioritized issues that they must address. For example, the ESMs must address gaps in resources, product team alignments, compensation, and incentive plans, knowledge, experience, and infrastructure needs across the organization, both before and during the enterprise deployment of Scrum.

The Scrum Teams also need a physical place to work, ideally in a co-located facility with room to work, conduct breakout sessions, and set up their information radiators. The developers need network access, development and testing computers, and software development and testing tools. These investments advance the effectiveness of the Scrum Team.

Lacking effective communications programs

Organizations that mandate a change to Scrum without preparation are doomed to failure. People need to know why change is required. They want to know what's in it for them. They need to feel they are safe in the change situation, otherwise, they will resist it. Moreover, they need to know what they have to do to be successful in the new environment. None of this can happen overnight.

Start by building a communications plan. The organization likely has the skills in-house to do this, as both marketing staff and project managers have the skills and training to develop and execute effective communications plans. Make sure the communications plan provides a layout of the specific details of why the change is necessary, the timelines, and the expected organizational and personal benefits expected as outcomes of the change.

Make sure employees and managers know who to go to if they have questions or concerns. Provide details on training opportunities and dates. The communications strategy should include information on the staged roll-out priorities and initiation dates as that information becomes available. Also, the communications plan should emphasize early and continuing promotion of implementation successes and the specific accomplishments of individual Scrum Teams.

Failing to educate

It should be evident that organizations that wish to implement Scrum need to train their employees in advance of the implementation and then provide continuing training opportunities as the teams form and mature. But based on my experience, too many companies refuse to make the human and financial resources available to support an effective training program. Even if they do provide access to training resources, how many organizations track and provide incentives to employees who participate in training programs that are relevant to the organization's continued success?

Going back to our discussions on Shuhari, it can take years to master a new subject. The organization might start by providing access to online courses that cover the fundamentals of Scrum. But the organization should also consider bringing in experts to teach Scrum classes and directly address questions unique to the organization's implementation of Scrum. Over time, the organization will produce its experts, and these folks should be available to mentor other Scrum Teams.

Also, the training can't just be about agile and Scrum but should also encompass development practices and skills and the technologies and tools used by the development organization.

The bottom line is learning is an ongoing, never-ending requirement.