In the spirit of inquiry, fairness, and a generally bad attitude because it’s raining, let’s consider how strong a case we can make against Scrum. It might be fun.

I’ve been writing recently, and for ages, supporting Scrum, because I think it’s a pretty good starting point. Some of my esteemed colleagues and interlocutors on the Internet do not like Scrum and often write more or less well-crafted screeds denouncing Scrum. Often, I’ve chosen to refute those denunciations, object to those screeds, because of inadequacies I perceive in their reasoning. Or, perhaps, because I enjoy a good argument, as a way to sharpen all our understandings, thinkings, and presentations. Or, a third possibility: maybe I’m kind of a jerk. No, that couldn’t be it.

Anyway, moving right along, in this series, I want to try to make the best case I can against Scrum, and I’ll try to consider all the dimensions of Scrum that I can, including Scrum as it’s written down, as it’s taught in the courses, as it’s understood in the hallways, and as it’s implemented in the workroom.

My thought is, roughly, that it’s clear that Scrum doesn’t always work, things do go wrong fairly frequently, and there might well be some systemic reasons why this happens. We might be able to identify some of those reasons and work to lessen their effect.

In a way this is the opposite side of the “Hills to Die On” series, which is also ongoing. The purpose of that series is to look at objections to Scrum and tease them apart to find the truth in them. The purpose of this series is a bit more prosecutorial than that. In this series, I’m going to go after Scrum as hard as I can. I shall try to be firm but fair. Maybe.

You can help, if you wish. Mail me or tweet me your concerns and arguments. I can’t promise to write about everything but I’ll write about the things that seem to be popular concerns, if I’m up to it.

Thanks! Let’s see what happens.