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Response to someone explaining "Why I stopped using Scrum"

Last post 12:30 pm September 4, 2014 by Charles Bradley
1 reply
Jonathan Orditz
08:51 am September 4, 2014

Hello!

We are doing a transition from Waterfall to Agile in our company and naturally there is some resistance to Change and some discussions (which is very good, because we can Exchange our ideas and so progressively diminish resistance ;-).

During one of these discussions a colleague mentioned the blog of a friend of him, an Independent engineer with a lot of experience, etc... who stopped using Scrum: http://blog.martinelli.ch/2013/07/why-i-stopped-using-scrum.html

Can please someone comment (directly in the blog of this friend or here) the Argumentation of this engineer?
As I am a supporter of using Scrum in our Company I have given my own Argumentation for using it in our context (we have a critical size of 3 People for the development Team and one Scrummaster, one Product Owner for each Project, what is the minimal size prescribed by Scrum). Now it would be really interesting that People outside from our company which have made other experiences with Scrum also post a response and start a concrete and constructive discussion, so that we are not only influenced by one Person (and even if this Person worked since 18 years in the Engineering field, etc...) but have many views to discuss together to be able to better evaluate our choices.

Please post your comments and argumentation concerning the blog entry: http://blog.martinelli.ch/2013/07/why-i-stopped-using-scrum.html

Thanks in advance!

Charles Bradley
12:30 pm September 4, 2014

I don't have a big problem with what the guy wrote, though I would want to hear some more context about his situation before I would consider the opinion to be credible.

Are all 3 people co-located all the time?
Is the product they produce a market leader as confirmed by press reports?
Why is there so much discussion about bugs? That seems wasteful.
How often do they release software to their users?
What are their customer satisfaction #'s?
What market share percentage do they hold?
What's the revenue per employee?

3 people is on the low side for a Dev Team (3-9), so while Scrum may not be needed, I'd want to know all of the above before I would agree that they don't "need Scrum." Quite possible I might agree in this case, but these cases are a tiny tiny fraction of a percentage point of all software dev -- almost a trivial product/context really.

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