This is an excerpt from a chapter my new book Achieving Business Agility at Small to Mid-Scale.
Scrum.Org defines “ScrumBut” as meaning “that Scrum has exposed a dysfunction that is contributing to the problem, but is too hard to fix. A ScrumBut retains the problem while modifying Scrum to make it invisible so that the dysfunction is no longer a thorn in the side of the team.”
But ironically, Scrum limits the options of how to fix this dysfunction by requiring its immutable roles, rules, artifacts and events be followed. If one fixes the dysfunction by dropping a Scrum practice while adding a non-Scrum practices the team is still doing “Scrumbut” even though they’ve eliminated the dysfunction. But now, by not doing Scrum they are in unfamiliar territory since Scrum does not provide insights on the intention of each of its practices. This tends to have new teams in particular, that don’t understand the intentions of the Scrum practices, have to stick to Scrum or go outside of the range of Scrum.
If people just abandon practices without adopting a new one to fulfill its intent ScrumBut is likely a bad thing. Substituting practices requires understanding the intention of the practice being substituted &a set of alternatives to choose from.
This is an excerpt from Lean-Agile at the Team: A Lean Approach to Scrum &Kanban. See 1st comment for url