Two questions about Scrum value

I recently saw a couple of questions about Scrum. At first they seemed quite harmless, but then they started me thinking…

I was looking through a Request for Quote document. It’s a standard “due diligence” document from a company looking for a quote for a technology solution. It’s a very general document – it describes its target as:

A “technology solution” is defined as computer hardware, software solution or hosted software/hardware services.

So this could apply to pretty much any technology development.

The document consists of a large set of questions to allow the purchaser to assess products and perform due diligence. Fairly standard procedure. And most of the document was just as I expected. But down at the bottom there were a couple of questions that got me thinking…

Do you support application product development utilizing Agile Scrum methodology?
Will you provide qualified and experienced resources for running Agile projects (certified Scrum Masters and Coaches)?

Everything else in the document was about the functionality of the product, but these were unexpected because they were about how the product was developed. Of course it’s good to see vendors focusing on good practice, as this will help to pull this in to the vendor organisations. So initially I felt these were good questions.

But then I became a little concerned. It’s normal and expected for a purchaser to ask if a vendor has ISO9001 accreditation. This represents an independent assessment that the processes used by the organisation are appropriate and well managed. Of course not all ISO9001 accredited companies are equal. You can question the robustness of the checking, but ISO9001 accreditation indicates that you have a system in place for managing quality. It isn’t a specific process.

[ISO9001] requires organizations to define these objectives themselves and continually improve their processes in order to reach them

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

This case is a little different.

Is Scrum “the answer”?

The purchaser requires (or prefers, as it’s not a hard requirement) that the developers use Scrum. The implication is that the use of the Scrum methodology will inherently ensure better development.

Perhaps this shows Scrum “coming of age”?

The Scrum approaches are accepted as “good practice” such that just following them is seen as a “good thing”. But it’s almost as though the purchaser is saying more. By tying the question to Scrum (rather than saying “do you follow a formal development process?“) are they implying that Scrum is inherently superior to other approaches?

Is even bad Scrum better than (say) good Waterfall?

The truth of course is that no project approach is so complete that it can substitute for support, culture and experience. I would even suggest that how you manage a process is more critical than which approach you choose. And that there are plenty of people who are nominally running Scrum, but for whatever reason not in an effective way. I like the term “Dark Scrum” coined by Ron Jeffries for this.

388,000 Certified ScrumMasters
82,000 Certified Scrum Product Owners
… suggesting that nearly 80 percent of teams are without a trained Product Owner

Ron Jeffries – “Dark Scrum”

Scrum qualifications

The other factor here is the second question. I guess when you’ve adopted Scrum as a reference, it’s obvious to ask whether the teams are qualified and experienced. And ensuring experience could mitigate my concerns about the first question.

But “experienced” is hard to measure, and “qualified” is easy. So this sort of question drives a certification market. For a long time there has been such a market in Classical project management. Companies look for specific qualifications (the Project Management Institute’s “Project Management Practitioner” is an example). Project managers chase these, not specifically because they have value but because they are a “standard”. I leave aside the question of whether they do have value – I personally found PMP useful for my team.

Experience and ability can become deprioritised against certification. And perhaps Scrum is going the same way as it matures. Scrum certification is widespread. Scrum.org now has eight different courses. ScrumAlliance has ten.

This risks diverging from the original Scrum thinking. Scrum is focussed on self-organising, learning teams. Is it really valid to have such a qualification-led approach to an approach which describes itself as below:

Scrum is not a process, technique, or definitive method. Rather, it is a framework within which you can employ various processes and techniques.

The Scrum Guide