Scrum Enthusiasts — which kind are you?
I grew up in the Northern suburbs of Athens in Greece during the 1980s. As a kid I used to love Easter, which is one of the most celebrated holidays in the country!
During the Holy Week we practice certain traditions that have survived and followed over centuries. As an example, during
- Holy Wednesday, we would bake Easter koulourakia (a biscuit-bun hybrid).
- Holy Thursday, we used to dye the Easter eggs red and bake tsoureki (Easter bread).
The entire Holy Week, is a week of sadness and mourning; each day has religious significance and there is a deeper underlying meaning and reason why certain activities (like the aforementioned) take place.
Somehow, we missed/never bothered with all the spiritual aspect of it and for us it was a joyful week of baking and spending time as a family. We would tend to follow the bare minimum of these traditions, and we would randomly select which ones to follow.
On the other hand, my uncle’s family were truly devoted Christians who visited the Church regularly, read the Bible constantly, and during Easter they would follow all traditions closely, both mentally and physically.
When the two families spent Easter together, these differences were becoming really transparent and I started realising that my understanding of the religion was superficial.
You could say that both our families were religious… Yet, we were so different in our approach, understanding and the way we chose to follow Christianity!
I have been involved with Scrum and Agile, in one way or another, for over 15 years. Over the years I have met a lot of people that had some experience with Scrum, and some were more enthusiastic than others about the framework and its benefits.
A few years back, I was lucky to meet a couple of people (now good friends) that were really passionate about Scrum, as was I… HOWEVER, there was something different about the way they approached Scrum — it reminded me of my family and my uncle’s family.
In my mind there are two kinds of Scrum Enthusiasts. I thought that the best way to describe them, is to draw a parallel given my observations during Easter from my childhood. Let me try to summarise the differences, using my example above as a parallel:
As you can infer by the introduction above, and if we replace religion (Christianity) with the Scrum framework, I used to belong to the Superficial Kind of Scrum enthusiasts for many years.
I used to have a superficial understanding of Scrum, “coach” teams to follow the rules to the letter and never bothered understanding the why behind each element. I was in a mental state in which Zombie Scrum (or pragmatic Scrum) was totally acceptable, yet I was doing a disservice to my teams!
However, over the last few years, I have been on a personal journey to not only increase my self-awareness but explore and reflect at Scrum at a deeper level, with a series of articles exploring the Scrum Guide 2020! Hopefully, I can evolve into the Reflective Kind of Scrum enthusiasts.
Now take a step back and reflect…
Which kind of Scrum enthusiast are YOU?
