Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts and rules are immutable. Ironically, immutability is as non-Agile as one can be – so why is this? When difficulties arise in how work is being done a question must be asked – “are we doing the right thing poorly or just doing the wrong thing? Scrum pre-defines the “right” thing & says keep working on until you do it correctly. But what if these are not ideal for your situation? What do you do then?
There are two mindsets that can guide this. The first is that we can’t really understand what’s happening in a complex system & since we know if we abide by the framework we’ll succeed so let’s follow it, inspecting & adapting to improve how we do that. The second says that although we don’t have predictability in a complex system there are several dynamics we can understand – delays (in feedback, using information, workflow) cause waste & are disruptive. Not understanding what to build is even worse. This enables us to focus on the intent of our work.
Scrum can be improved by simply adding “Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, & rules can only be changed if the resulting change has the same intent of the original” to the Scrum Guide. Of course, you won’t be doing Scrum anymore. But should you care?