These are the 8 things I have the most problems with from Scrum Guide

From my series ‘Does Scrum Hold up to Scrutiny?’

Last week I finished my series “Does Scrum Hold up to Scrutiny?”. I wanted to assess every line critically and every word in the Scrum Guide 2020 to see if it makes sense to me. Overall, I can confirm that the Scrum Guide is solid and coherent. I like it.

However, there are passages in the Scrum Guide that made me frown. Things that didn’t make sense to me or weren’t in line with the premise of Scrum. Here are 8 of the most problematic things for me in the Scrum Guide.

Scrum Values

The Scrum Values of Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect and Courage are key in Scrum. They bring the pillars of empiricism to life (transparency, inspection, adaptation). Everything in Scrum involves empiricism.

But how realistic is it for the team and the stakeholders to uphold the Scrum Values? As soon as the Scrum Team needs to deal with (to name a few things) micro-management, silos, conflict avoidance, or politics: what is then left of the Scrum Values? And to a larger extent, what is then left of Scrum?

No hierarchies

Scrum Teams should have no hierarchies. But how realistic is this? Of the three accountabilities of Scrum (Developers, Product Owner, Scrum Master), two have a leadership aspect.