Konubinix' opinionated web of thoughts

Scrum Is Not Agile Because Formally Defined?

Fleeting

scrum is not agile because formally defined?

Some people claim that because scrum is formally defined and not doing all of the scrum guide is not doing scrum means that scrum is not agile.

That is to me a fallacy.

I think that the reasoning is

  1. agile encourages continuous improvement,
  2. continuous improvement implies putting oneself into question in order to adjust its behavior accordingly,
  3. therefore a method pretending to be agile should put itself into question in order to adjust its behavior accordingly,

Then,

  1. scrum is formally defined,
  2. one pretending doing scrum cannot adjust its behavior accordingly,
  3. therefore scrum is not agile

I think the mistake is in the second premise of the second argument. On the contrary, scrum encourages one to adjust. Actually, inspection and adaptation are two of the three pillars of scrum. Even not doing scrum is encouraged if one realizes that scrum is not appropriated.

This, to me, has nothing to do with the fact scrum is formally defined. Also, scrum evolves a lot, it even became #NoEstimate in 2020. Therefore even pretending that scrum is frozen in time is not actually supported with evidences.