How Scrum Inhibits Agility

Abstract

People are celebrating and enjoying the 25th anniversary of Scrum, mostly with many successes and evidence about how it supports agility, leaving a limited space for how it inhibits and even harms it. There are limited studies in the literature covering this topic, posing no complete and comprehensive study focusing on other side of the coin. To fill this gap, this study aims to uncover a comprehensive list of how Scrum inhibits and harms agility and to open a gate to underpinning Scrum promises not sufficiently questioned so far. The following inhibitors were identified and discussed along with their reasoning: Productizing for Marketing, Determinism, the Method Prison, Running and Running without Enough Thinking, Using Proxies of Reality, Fragmentation, Falling in Love with Physical Things, and Blessing the Customer. Regarding the issues, some prominent recommendations were also made. This study shows that Scrum can be better than some others or the best way to do software, yet it has still some way to go ahead.