Adam Gonnerman

It's one thing when agile coaches pipe up with "that's not Scrum," and quite another when accusations of "fake Agile" are thrown around. I find the former irksome, but at least they have a leg to stand on with the 'End Note' of The Scrum Guide in their corner: "Scrum is free and offered in this Guide. Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and rules are immutable and although implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum . Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices." (emphasis mine) This is why I've taken to calling any more pragmatic approach 'Notscrum.' After all, if they insist that Scrum is 'immutable' ( like Plato's heavenly perfections ), then clearly what I introduce to teams and use to coach them is a more mutable creature, one that adapts to situations to achieve the dream of Agile. "We are uncovering better ...

The Scrum Guide has changed a few times, and the most recent revision was published in November 2017. Although a number of people have contributed to defining Scrum over the years, the key parties and primary authors of the Scrum guide are Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland. That Scrum has changed over the years should not come as a surprise to anyone who is familiar with it or with Agile in general. Change is core to Scrum, with 'inspect and adapt' being a key activity for teams. With this comes learning that can at times be universalized and shared with teams everywhere. When it is particularly compelling it becomes part of the Scrum standard. Scrum is mutable. Several months ago I was listening to an Agile podcast and end up shutting it off about 20 minutes in because the guests and the host attacked Scrum itself as a bad methodology and then turned around and complained that 'no one does Scrum right.' One guest seemed to think it was downright scandalous that Agile t...