What does the Scrum framework do?

September 17, 2013

To be honest, Scrum itself doesn’t ‘do’ anything. Scrum is just a basic framework that gives you some practices, etc (and includes some values and principles). It depends mostly on the people in the field, or, we might say, in the Team.

Scrum will immediately help in some ways. But its main value, IMO, is in letting the Team (and others) see the problems more clearly and prioritize them.

In a similar way, Bill Belichick doesn’t do anything. (Belichick is the coach for the New England Patriots. While he has been there, it has been a very successful football team. Someone thinks he is worth a couple of million per year.) He does not play football. He does not win any games, himself. His teams, on the field, executing his ideas and following his program and his coaches, win the games. (Or lose. They have lost some Superbowl games.)

Scrum is just a bare framework.

You and your team must add things to it.

You and your team must execute well.
You and your team must remove impediments (ex: big fierce burly enemy linemen).
You and your team must run up the middle.
You are your team must risk an interception.
You and your team must recover from mistakes on the field.

The Scrum framework helps.

What can be said for Scrum?

Well, it replaced all the “stupid, in the way, bothering-us” stuff with a fairly light framework.

This is actually a huge improvement. At least with Scrum we are no longer held back by all the stupid stuff that was waterfall (or maybe the chaos of our homegrown ‘no-process’). That is actually a huge plus. But that part is only a win in the sense of removing a huge negative.

Scrum is mostly ‘not in the way.’ Helps us see. If we are willing to see the truth, Scrum will help us see the real situation each day, and at the end of each Sprint.

In other words, Scrum sets up a basic learning process.

You and your team must actually see, learn, improve. Then win.
You and your team must use the tool well.

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To be honest, I see some people who expect Scrum to magically fix everything. It does not.

Scrum helps you see (and more than just see), …but still you and the Team must do the hard work of fixing, one at a time, the impediments. As one example.