Lost in Communication and Collaboration — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (2)

TL; DR: Lost in Communication and Collaboration

Lost in Communication and Collaboration addresses two categories from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy that are closely aligned: ineffective collaboration at the stakeholder level, often resulting in an unsuited reporting system based on misaligned metrics.

Learn how these Scrum anti-patterns categories manifest themselves and how they affect value creation for customers and the organization’s long-term sustainability.

This is the second of three articles analyzing the 183 anti-patterns from the upcoming Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book. The third article will address failures and breakdowns in planning, process, collaboration, and alignment within the Scrum framework.

Lost in Communication and Collaboration — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (2) — Age-of-Product.com
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The Peril of Adhering to Legacy Systems, Processes, and Practices — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (1)

TL; DR: Adherence to Legacy Systems, Processes, and Practices

Administrative overreach and micromanagement in Scrum mainly arise from clinging to legacy systems and traditional (management) practices, leading to rigidity and misapplication of Agile principles. The excessive control by stakeholders and the management level stifles creativity and adaptability, disrupting planning and hindering a Scrum team’s growth. Moreover, these categories from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy often emphasize an unbalanced focus on short-term gains, neglecting long-term strategy, value creation, and the essential alignment among all stakeholders to succeed in uncertainty.

Learn how these Scrum anti-patterns categories manifest themselves and how they affect value creation for customers and the long-term sustainability of the organization.

This is the first of three articles analyzing the 183 anti-patterns from the upcoming Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book. The following article will address communication and collaboration issues at the team and organizational levels.

Adherence to Legacy Systems, Processes, and Practices — Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy (1) — Age-of-Product.com
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Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy — The Big Picture of Why Scrum Fails?

TL; DR: Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy

As the editing process of the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide is nearing its end, it is time to take the next step. The brand new Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide offers 180-plus anti-patterns organized by roles, events, artifacts, and commitments. However, the Guide does not create a meta-level or abstract Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy. Consequently, the Guide does not provide an overall strategy to counter or evade Scrum anti-patterns at a personal, cultural, structural, or organizational level. The question is whether it is possible to create such a taxonomy.

Read on and learn more about the first steps of completing the big picture of Scrum anti-patterns.

Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy — The Big Picture of Why Scrum Fails — Age-of-Product.com
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Jira Anti-Patterns

TL; DR: Jira Anti-Patterns

If you ask people to come up with popular attributes for “Agile” or “agility,” Scrum and Jira will likely be among the top ten featured. Moreover, in any discussion about the topic, someone will mention that using Scrum running on top of Jira does not make an organization agile. However, more importantly, this notion is often only a tiny step from identifying Jira as a potential impediment to outright vilifying it. So in March 2023, I embarked on a non-representative research exercise to learn how organizations misuse Jira from a team perspective as I wanted to understand Jira anti-patterns.

Read on and learn more about how a project management tool that is reasonably usable when you use it out of the box without any modifications turns into a bureaucratic nightmare, what the reasons for this might be, and what we can do about it.

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Help Select the Book Cover of the new ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ by Pearson

TL; DR: Red or Blue?

I need your support, dear community. For months, I have been working on turning the popular Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide PDF into a new book from Scrum-org’s Professional Scrum Series, published by Pearson. We will soon start the editing process, and I am hopeful we may see a release date in Q2/2023.

Creating the graphics has been challenging at times; there will be more than 50 cartoons and sketches in the book. However, it has also been gratifying to rethink some of the old cartoons and, generally, improve their quality.

There is one challenge, though, I like to ask for your support: which cover shall it be — red or blue?

Help Select the Book Cover of the new ‘Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide’ by Pearson — Age-of-Product.com
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Agile Micromanagement — Seriously? Making Your Scrum Work #27

TL; DR: Agile Micromanagement

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Indeed, given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. For example, the Scrum Guide clearly states the importance of self-management at the Scrum team level. Nevertheless, the prevailing cause of many messed-up attempts to use Scrum result from what I call agile micromanagement, a pseudo-commitment to agile principles only to be overridden whenever it seems beneficial from a stakeholder’s or manager’s perspective.

Join me and delve into the importance of self-managing Scrum teams in less than two minutes.

Agile Micromanagement — Making Your Scrum Work #27 — Age-of-Product.com
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