We had a Scrum training session at work on Friday. The session was pretty good, especially for the non-technical folks in attendance. I was lucky because my future "product owner" was there and seemed to be digging it, as far as I could tell. Actually, he's already been a product owner for a year, but he isn't yet an ordained product owner.

One thing I've tried to point out is that, on some of our teams, we have been doing a lot of the practices described for some time: we have a product backlog, sprints, planning meetings, plan by user story, we work closely with the business, and many other things. It may come as a shock to some people, but Scrum didn't invent these things. It's just a way packaging a set of practices that have been working for some people.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of weight placed on the trappings and ceremony of Scrum, and this frightens me. For example, even though, for all intents and purposes, we have a product backlog, it's not a "Real" product backlog because we used Issue Tracker to store the user stories in. We prioritize our product backlog using Excel and don't use story points yet (we've been using Easy, Medium, Hard,) so that doesn't count either. We have regular meetings with our "product owner" to plan "sprints", but they aren't real because we don't have a "scrum master." I can see us coming to work soon to find there are a new set of forms to fill out, recording that we followed the approved procedure for a "scrum planning meeting."

All of the things I like about agile, all the value I can see, really, is that agile allows for change. If something doesn't work, ditch it. If it does, keep an eye out for ways to improve it. Constantly measure, improve, listen to what the people doing the work are telling you. Process is less important than people and working software.

Are organizations that adopt Scrum as prescribed by a consultant/trainer really better off? Perhaps, but this strikes me as kind of a "just give the man a fish because he'll never be able to fish" kind of deal. If I were more prone to see the worst in people, it would probably occur to me that this approach sets us up for another consultant deal in a couple of years, when "Scrum isn't working out for us."

What we are going to do is Scrum', a derivative of Scrum that doesn't change, evolve, or get better with age. We'll end up doing it for 2 - 5 years (assuming we can even get this off the ground,) then it will kind of stop working, and we'll have some other consultant come in and teach us about whatever gets all the buzz next time.

We're just trying to improve the way we work, but I think the thing these consultants are doing is a little disingenuous. We are certainly helped by what they are telling us, but they need to do a better job of telling people that this isn't a religion, they need to use their noggins, and not think so much about preserving their exalted status as agile coaches.