There is an awesome book Peopleware, written way back in the mid 1980s. I am not sure how many folks out there have read that book or if they really understood the concepts of the book. In the very first chapter the authors make it very clear, to quote them:
The major problems of our work are not so much technological as sociological in nature.
And yet here we are in 2025, where we are still looking at AI to address technological problems believing somehow it will change the world around, without addressing the sociological problems underneath.
Why Scrum was supposed to work:
Scrum is structured around the foundational principle of Empiricism. It enables teams to focus on common shared goals, and then work collaboratively to Inspect and Adapt as required to achieve the desired goals. For the Inspection and Adaptation to happen, Scrum focuses on creating Transparency within work environments.
Scrum promotes the idea of self-management and cross-functional teams; which are intended to address the sociological problems of the team such as - lack of communication, unavailability of skilled personnel, lack of motivation, disconnect with leadership or stakeholders and more.
Why Scrum fails to work in many cases:
Scrum was built to address the sociological problems within the team. As the team matures with the knowledge and usage of Scrum it will get on its way to be a hyper-performing team and address any technological challenges to be successful.
However, this framework was reduced down to a development methodology in most (if not all) organizations. In my personal experience, I have seen 10s of teams going through the motions and cursing them because they never understood the purpose of it.
I have seen a client handover a project to three different vendors where one vendor is responsible for development of code, another for testing the code and the third for just deploying and maintaining their work environments. All the teams working on this project used to call themselves Scrum Team and neither one was creating a single DONE Increment by the end of Sprint. And then there were leaders who justified the stance of the client saying that the “creator” could not be the “checker”.
In one another instance, I was looking at an in-house Scrum training module. It was full of inconsistencies. I raised the concern with L&D team and one of my superiors. I was told, “you are looking at it from a theory perspective and not how the practical world works”.
So were we really addressing the sociological issues that often lead to project failures? IMHO, no, never. What we did instead, in most places is we tried to retrofit the framework to meet the existing context. And that’s why we see a lot of people still complaining that Scrum doesn’t work.
What is required to succeed:
The foundational principles are key to make Scrum successful in any organization.
- Empiricism: create an environment where people are allowed to speak their mind without the fear of repercussions.
- Self-Management: Give people clear objectives and allow them to autonomy find the ways to achieve the objectives.
- Cross-functional: Allow people time and space where they can improve their skills and knowledge. This helps people to support each other.
Also, reward the effort, not the output. In complex situations, where many variables are at play there is no guarantee that every team will always deliver a successful outcome every time. We need to make failure as part of “experimentation” culture. Learn from the failure and avoid it in the future.
To Conclude:
Remember, Scrum is not for solving our technical or technological problems. Scrum helps us address the sociological problems that exist within an organization or a team. Use Scrum principles to identify those problems and address them.
As the teams overcome their internal sociological challenges they become better at solving their technical problems too as a collaborative unit. And isn’t that what we were expecting when we read the - The New “New Product” Development Game.
P.S: If you are interested in making Scrum work for you, at Agilemania we help you in doing so. Explore our offerings at Agilemania website.
P.P.S If you simply want to explore Scrum then we also have some courses for you to get started.