Administrative overreach and micromanagement in Scrum mainly arise from clinging to legacy systems and traditional (management) practices, leading to rigidity and misapplication of Agile principles. The excessive control by stakeholders and the management level stifles creativity and adaptability, disrupting planning and hindering a Scrum team’s growth. Moreover, these categories from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy often emphasize an unbalanced focus on short-term gains, neglecting long-term strategy, value creation, and the essential alignment among all stakeholders to succeed in uncertainty.
Learn how these Scrum anti-patterns categories manifest themselves and how they affect value creation for customers and the long-term sustainability of the organization.
This is the first of three articles analyzing the 183 anti-patterns from the upcoming Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide book. The following article will address communication and collaboration issues at the team and organizational levels.
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Let us delve into the three aspects of adhering to legacy systems, processes, and practices from the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy — administrative overreach, interfering with Scrum Teams by overstepping and micromanagement, and overemphasis on immediate value:
Administrative overreach in the Scrum context often results from the continued prevalence of legacy systems and processes, interfering with Scrum’s first principles. It refers to a reluctance to embrace agile practices and clinging to traditional ways, leading to rigidity, bureaucracy, and misunderstanding of principles. It includes tasks and behaviors that undermine the philosophy of self-management, empowerment, and flexibility inherent to Scrum, failing to adapt, a reversion to non-Agile practices, or even an outright rejection of Agile principles.
These actions can manifest as inconsistent implementation of Scrum practices, impeding the team’s growth and independence, disrupting planning, and creating confusion and inefficiencies. Administrative overreach reflects resistance to Agile values, emphasizing form over function and hindering adaptability and responsiveness.
Manifestation examples:
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This Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy category primarily deals with excessive control and interference with Scrum Teams, stifling creativity, self-organization, autonomy, and trust. The transgressions may come from various parties, including stakeholders or line managers, contravening the core Agile principles of trust, collaboration, self-management, and adaptability. This overarching issue may manifest differently depending on the context — for example, organizational culture or size or the market the organization serves — and impact the Scrum Team’s decision-making processes.
Manifestation examples:
This category of the Scrum anti-patterns taxonomy emphasizes the dangers of an excessive focus on short-term gains or immediate value at the cost of long-term strategy, alignment, and sustainability. Such an approach may lead to neglecting vital aspects of product development and overshadowing broader organizational goals and relationships. The category serves as a reminder to balance short-term deliverables with the overall success and sustainability of the product and organization.
Manifestation examples:
The struggle with adherence to legacy concepts, processes, and practices in Scrum underscores the importance of embracing Agile principles over traditional systems.
It manifests as excessive control and interference, stifling creativity and autonomy and prioritizing short-term gains at the expense of long-term strategy. Instead, organizations must recognize the dangers of this approach and strive for a balanced perspective that aligns immediate deliverables with the overall success and sustainability of the product and the broader organizational goals. By doing so, they can foster a culture of self-management, empowerment, flexibility, and proper adherence to Scrum principles.
Scrum Anti-Patterns Taxonomy — The Big Picture of Why Scrum Fails?
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