Beginning Scrum Failure Pattern

The bait…
Sometimes it is easy to get a quick qualitative observation and think
“oh its working”. A simple observation backed up by the group opinion is
taken as “good enough”, to inform us our scrum implementation is working.

The twist…
These teams rely too much on memory, which fades dramatically after 3
months thereafter their observations and response when something is
wrong becomes increasingly blind. (in other words, the excel spreadsheet
of data in their heads runs out of buffer and becomes corrupt)

The fear….
Any metrics can be twisted and the word “discipline” can be used as a
way of getting tough. Which then defeats the purpose. Developing good
quantitative measure that do not get usurped by management (or other
force) becomes the challenge. The fear is that metrics will be used to
push the team when a downward interpretation is made and thus encourage
gaming the system.

The loss…
Scrum Teams fail to build and leverage informative history based on
metrics. They rely too much on memory. Their scrum implementation
initially looks good but lacks sustainability because the guidance is so
weak.

Response:
Good metrics are essential to helping teams improve long term and
organizations learn. However, all metrics can be abused and misused
which will defeat the purpose of the metrics collected. It takes
discipline to not be reactive but, instead use these numbers to help
teams and organizations get better.