Why might leaders turn to the Product Operating Model (POM) after a previous Agile transformation, for example, based on SAFe, failed?
This article uncovers the psychological, organizational, and strategic reasons behind this seeming contradiction, exploring what motivates leaders to believe that a new approach will succeed where others have not.
Scrum is a purposefully incomplete framework. Consequently, it needs to be augmented with tools and practices to apply its theoretical foundation to an organization’s business reality: what problems shall be solved for whom in which market? Moreover, there is an organization’s culture to take into account. However, the intentional “gap” is not a free-for-all to accept whatever comes to mind or is convenient. Some tools and practices have proven highly effective in supporting Scrum’s application and reaping its benefits. And then there are others — the Scrum trap.
Let’s look at what practices and tools for collaboration and team building are not helpful when used with Scrum.
One of my favorite exercises from my Professional Scrum Master classes is how to best sabotage a Scrum Master as a member of the middle management. The exercise rules are simple: You’re not allowed to use any form of illegal activity. So, outsourcing the task to a bunch of outlaws is out of the question. Instead, you are only allowed to use practices that are culturally acceptable within your organization.
Read on and learn more on how to best sabotage a Scrum Master from the exercise results of more than ten PSM I and PSM II classes. (I slightly edited the suggestions for better readability.)
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. When Scrum becomes an element of an agile transformation, a lack of agile leadership qualities on the incumbents’ side may impede its overall progress significantly despite the best efforts of all other change agents.
📺 Join me and explore the consequences of a lack of agile leadership qualities and what you can do about it in less than three minutes.
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. When Scrum becomes an element of an agile transformation, the following three common essential agile failure patterns prove to be an exceptionally tough nut to crack for any Scrum Master.
📺 Join me and explore the consequences of foreseeable failure patterns and what you can do about them in a little more than seven minutes.
Update: I am running a poll on LinkedIn—join the voting: “What is your top agile failure pattern in organizations?”
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. To make things worse, a crucial success factor of every Scrum team is not even mentioned in the Scrum Guide: Any organization that wants to employ Scrum to learn faster than its competitors needs to have a solid failure culture.
📺 Join me and explore the consequences of not living a failure culture in less than three minutes.
