Dismantling SCRUM

No, agile is not dead. It has only got old and clunky to work with.

It has been in the air for more than a couple of years, this shared feeling that what we have used to organise our work it's not suiting well with how product development has evolved. Here I'm talking about the practices, the principles remain current and effective.

The main counterattacks when making explicit these thoughts are "you are obviously implementing SCRUM wrong" or "there are no valid alternatives that allow an organised way of operating". It might be. I've been an enthusiastic practitioner for several years, but I see fewer and fewer successful cases of teams adopting this methodology.

The strict framework, with its emphasis on conveying work on user stories and measuring performance, can often stifle creativity and limit the ability to explore new solutions. The focus is placed on achieving predictable, incremental progress, rather than taking the time to consider alternative approaches.

As a result, teams may be less likely to take risks and pursue innovative ideas that could potentially lead to significant breakthroughs.

What I'm jealous of, are those new (usually tiny) teams that form around a product and don't have the minimum need to make explicit how they work, they just do it. If it works it works, if it doesn't they change it. That's true agility.