How to scam yourself in product development

A short novel on how I managed to fail hard with scrum

I once hired a Scrum Master under the impression that my teams will be more productive then.

Lead to lots of discussions about process and who‘s responsible for what.

Turns out: developers don’t feel responsible for scoping anymore.

Had to hire a Product Owner to write user stories.

But he wasn’t technical enough, he needed a sidekick to translate business to tech and refine the stories.

Now my developers complain about the amount of non-technical people in the team slowing down the development process.

Hired a project manager to remove roadblocks and serve the team.

Now I have more managers than developers.

Still no working product.

Moral?

Doing scrum by the book is a scam. It leads to enormous amounts of overhead.

Enable your developers and trust them to get the job done. Reduce ceremony and non-building staff. Establish a culture that welcomes change and productive criticism.