“We will abandon Scrum because we are adopting Devops”

Are you serious? — Episode 46

“We will work Devops as of this and this date so we will stop using Scrum”.

Seriously, this is what someone said to me not too long ago. This person saw Devops and Scrum as two separate things. It’s one or the other. And Devops is better.

This statement seriously concerned me.

To address this concern let’s first establish what Scrum and Devops are.

Scrum is:

“ a framework for developing, delivering, and sustaining complex products.” — Scrum Guide 2017

Important to note is that:

“Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional.[...]Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team. The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity.” — Scrum Guide 2017

Contrary to Scrum (the Scrum Guide) there’s no one universal truth for Devops. But it is safe to say that Devops is about:

“The practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.” — Ernest Mueller

Devops is about working better together and breaking down silos, to have shared responsibilities with the aim to improve productivity and quality. I found this article very informative.

Scrum is a framework which can be used in many ways. Devops is an approach specifically targeting Development and Operations (with variations which include Business, Security, etcetera). However there are similarities in what they aim to achieve.

Scrum vs Devops

• It is cross-functional teams vs operations and engineering participating together
• It is creating and sustaining complex products vs from design through the development process to production support
• Devops can be achieved in many different ways. Using Scrum as a framework is one of the ways to become Devops.

Bottom Line

The statement that Scrum is to be made obsolete because a company is going Devops is pointing towards a misunderstanding of at least one of the two, but probably both. Scrum can work perfectly in combination with Devops. In fact: if a team has all the competencies to be Devops then it is often a sign that this also is the optimal composition of the team to be effective with Scrum.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to bang that clap button. You can give up to 50 👏’s. Give it a try if you enjoy this article!

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