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Five Anti-Patterns in Scrum Adoptions
An anti-pattern is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer Andrew Koenig, was inspired by the book Design Patterns, which highlights a number of design patterns in software development that its authors considered to be highly reliable and effective.
The term was popularized three years later by the book AntiPatterns, which extended its use beyond the field of software design to refer informally to any commonly reinvented but bad solution to a problem.
1. Managing your Scrum Adoption like a project
While the Scrum Guide is actually quite thin, adopting Scrum and its core values isn’t easy. Many organizations approach this adoption as something that is ‘done’ at a certain point in time. A project with a fixed end date, after which the scrum processes and its alignment with the organizational and business goals seize to be evaluated and adjusted.
This mindset is not only highly counter-productive, but also in direct opposition to the Scrum values themself. Scrum teams rely on empiricism to keep delivering value. Organizations should rely on it to keep fine tuning their scrum adoption.
