Scrum – Where’s the Evidence?
Scrum – Where’s the Evidence?
I’ll acknowledge that some software development endeavours have been “successful”. Some of those have “used Scrum”. And some haven’t.
Of those that have “used Scrum”, what proportion have actually being doing “real Scrum” e.g. “by the book”, and what proportion have been doing “Scrum in name only (SINO)”?
And of those that have been doing “real Scrum”, and have claimed “success”, what proportion have been successful because of Scrum, and what proportion (irrespective of self-reported or externally-reported success) have been successful because of other factors, some connected with Scrum, and others more or less totally disconnected from Scrum? Factors that may have been overlooked, ignored or discounted?
In other words, where’s the evidence that Scrum, itself, is the core element of success?
I’ve never seen Scrum advocates address this elephant in the room.
– Bob
P.S. Much the same argument applies to Agile, in general. IME.
Think Different
Bob, this has really got me scratching my head – and as you say, this isn’t just limited to Scrums from scrumsalliance.org (still chuckling). If someone were to present evidence, in what acceptable form would that evidence typically be? Quantitative / qualitative? Is there any evidence from other methodologies or methods as to the link between “success” and the methodology? What evidence is there that Deming Theory leads to “success” and if there is, how is this articulated or presented?
Here’s a partial response: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-introductiontosociology/chapter/sociological-research/ I guess there’s a whole passel of stuff on the interwebs.
I agree with the general idea (where’s the evidence Agile works?), and I would also suggest we consider that the same question can be asked about most everything in management. Management is no science and for the most part it has not been sufficiently studied as a profession (here are the commonly useful techniques, here it is the evidence they work), like it has been done for medicine, architecture or structural engineering.
We should work hard addressing the questions: Where is the evidence that the current state of practice works? Where is the evidence anything new will work?
We are not there yet. Nobody should use Scrum, Agile, Lean or Deming’s ideas as a bar to measure any organization. In my view, they are just a collection of ideas other people tried and documented, possibly useful in some conditions and circumstances, and we get to use them in our own journey if so we choose. They are no standards to aspire to.
I might not have written this post had the Scrum Alliance not already jumped on the evidential bandwagon.