Starting with Scrum

An introduction to a series of articles I wrote describing how to start working with Scrum

this article was originally published at goretro.

A scholar, full of knowledge and opinions about dharma came to a monastery to learn about Zen.

After several weeks, he was sitting with his master, drinking tea.

His master refilled his teacup but did not stop pouring when the cup was full. The tea ran over and spilt all over the table.

“Stop! The cup is full!” said the scholar.

“Exactly,” said his master. “You are like this cup; you are full of knowledge. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full. Before I can teach you, you need to empty your cup.”

This parable illustrates what I think is one of the major problems with Scrum (and Agile, for that matter).

The bottom line is that there are so many ideas about how Scrum should be done, so many techniques, tools and best practices, that it is hard not to drown in the possibilities. We seem to have lost the essence of Scrum in an overfull cup.

For a long time, all of this was only a suspicion I had… Until I had the opportunity to coach a management team, with no knowledge of Agile. I described the experience in a previous article: