Common Failure Modes in Scrum
Learn to identify and address common Scrum failure modes including ineffective Product Owners, insufficient backlog refinement, oversized stories, and poor adherence to Scrum practices. This lesson helps you understand how to implement Scrum authentically to maximize team performance and maintain high discipline in Agile workflows.
We'll cover the following...
- Ineffective Product Owner
- Insufficient product backlog refinement
- Stories too large
- Daily scrums not held daily
- Overly long sprints
- Emphasis on horizontal slices rather than vertical slices
- Separate development teams and test teams
- Unclear Definition of Done
- Not driving to a releasable level of quality each sprint
- Retrospectives not held
- Lessons from retrospectives not implemented in the next sprint
- “Scrum and”
- Ineffective Scrum Master
- What the Scrum failure modes have in common
My company has seen many more ineffective Scrum implementations than effective ones. Most ineffective implementations are “Scrum-but,” meaning, “We’re doing Scrum, but we aren’t using some of its key practices.” Examples include, “We’re doing Scrum, but we aren’t doing daily standups.” Or “We’re doing Scrum, but we aren’t holding retrospectives.” Or “We’re doing Scrum, but we haven’t been able to fill the Product Owner role.” ...