Modern Agile makes safety a prerequisite — but is a slippery slope if you like Scrum
Scrum Not Welcome Here?
This article presents my views at the time of writing. Here you can find my current views — based on several events that happened — which show that I view things more positive now:
Modern Agile has four guiding principles. One of them is: Make Safety a Prerequisite.
I wholeheartedly agree. Safety is pivotal for high performing teams. This includes physical safety and psychological safety. Also, you wish to extend safety to your whole domain. This includes your users. Your products should be safe to use.
There’s one thing though. If you like Scrum then the Modern Agile community is a complicated one. You wish to know why? Well, let me explain.
Joshua Kerievsky’s talks
My introduction to Modern Agile was Joshua Kerievsky’s keynote at Agile 2016. He introduced a great new concept, but in doing so he said that both the Agile Manifesto and Scrum are outdated. They were great back then, but we moved on. It inspired me to write this article in which I argue that Scrum and Modern Agile can be a perfect fit:
So because I valued the Modern Agile principles I engaged in discussions about it. But remarks like these made me feel that as long as I like Scrum I’m not really considered to be understanding Modern Agile:
Note that I really admire Tim Ottinger. He’s very knowledgeable and respectful. So is his response here. Still it is in the end excluding Scrum and Scrum practitioners. Tim is Joshua’s colleague. He’s also an important face of the Modern Agile community.
Then came Joshua Kerievsky’s new talk. The title says it all: “Modern Alternatives to Scrum”. The thing is though: in his talk he’s talking about Scrum anti-patterns and then says they’re Scrum. Here’s his response after I approached him about it.
I don’t agree with this. I’d say that the following is the correct way to put it:
Blaming Scrum for the use of anti-patterns is like blaming the car for crashing after reckless driving.
But I can see what Joshua’s concern is. People might be doing Scrum well, but still struggle to make it fit for them. I agree with him that if you understand a framework well, practice it well but it still feels unfit for your situation, that you should adapt and perhaps abandon this framework.
But this is not how he discussed it in his talks. He simply stated that Scrum is outdated and he came with alternatives for Scrum that didn’t rule out Scrum at all. Also, I don’t see why his alternatives to the issues with Scrum are easier to implement than Scrum is. Practices like Release Planning and User Story Mapping can also be misunderstood and misapplied.
This difference in thinking probably has a lot to do with how Joshua and I view Scrum. If you watch the talks Joshua apparently looks at Scrum as a set of events, roles and artifacts. I see Scrum as far more. Scrum is based on empiricism, teams are self-organising, teams are cross-functional. Therefore it is crucial to be on the same page when you discuss Scrum. My advise is to take the latest version of the Scrum Guide as the definition of Scrum. Because it is just that.
Also:
I don’t see why you would abandon a certain framework to promote a set of principles that is supposed to be framework/alternative-agnostic.
I responded to his Twitter reply, making the case of safety for Scrum practitioners. Joshua turns it around, but meanwhile doesn’t make me feel better about it:
So if you think Scrum fits with Modern Agile, understand that the majority of the people in that community see Modern Agile as an alternative for Scrum. I continue be positive about the 4 Modern Agile principles. I remain convinced that Modern Agile and Scrum can go hand in hand. But I constantly feel that I have to fight an uphill battle if I engage with the Modern Agile community. While I would expect to be discussing with peers.
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If you’re not convinced yet, have a laugh at this.
