id: 1171,9
title: Failure modes of scrum (and its derivatives).
date: 2025-01-19

Failure modes of scrum (and its derivatives).

Scrum goes poorly when top-down management techniques are applied. The following symptoms can signal that leaders don’t know how to trust a team, which might be repaired by redoubled efforts toward delivering high visibility, high quality increments:rJ2

• Standup is extractive rather than collaboration planning for the day
• Planning is a series of demands rather than a goal and then self-organization
• Sprint review is mostly lamentation of failed expectations, same with retrospectives

Managing stakeholder expectations is a big part of this failure mode.