On a topic related to my recent efforts on Scrum Smells, I’ve started a page on the Scrum Alliance wiki to document Agile/Scrum Failures. The failures are not of the process itself but of the humans associated with the project. This all happened in response to a thread on Scrum Development that Robin Dymond started (Blog entry: The Scrum Project that Failed). In this thread Robin suggested, that we need a Journal of Agile/Scrum Failure much like his experience in the climbing world:
When I was a member of the Alpine Club of Canada there was an annual journal called “The Journal of Alpine Accidents.” Initially I thought this was odd. Once I started reading it the value instantly became clear. Climbing accidents make for gripping reading because lives are at stake. The real value is to other climbers who can read about what went wrong, what they did to correct, and how the events unfolded. This concept is not new, civil and mechanical engineering failures are studied, and we are all familiar with the painstaking work of the FAA when a plane crash happens.
With billions of dollars on the line every day, and a spectacularly high rate of project failure compared to other engineering disciplines, shouldn’t we be formally logging and analyzing failures?
After reading this I decided to start the journal, but there is a small catch I don’t know alot of good stories on Agile/Scrum failures so this is where my readers come in. If you know of a good failure story: i.e. an Agile/Scrum team that failed to deliver something of value to the customer then I would like to know about it. These can be stories that are already documented and you send me the link or stories that need documenting – in which case I can help.
BTW In most cases I expect that these failures will be related to the people and more importantly communications. As Jerry Weinberg says “Its always a people problem”.
Update: There has been some confusion: Its not that I think that an Agile or Scrum project can fail – but the people can fail to execute the methodologies well. Perhaps they don’t listen when the team raises issues, perhaps team members don’t want cooperate – “Its always a people problem”. Yet when we are caught up in the thick of things we often don’t see the early warning signs or recognize the fact that all these small problems point to something much bigger. In my mind the stories are a useful way to remind us of how things can go wrong and what it looks like when they do. As format there is none. Write your story any way that you and post wherever you want – your blog, the scrum community wiki etc.
This is a *really* great idea and boy have I got some war stories. Are there any guidelines for failure reports — length, tone, etc..
Nice. Looking forward to reading some stories. We’ve had our failures too. Would be instructive to read what’s happened to others.
I will link to this. People tend to shout about their victories not their defects so this will be useful lessons learned to all those trying to implement scrum. Thanks
A journal of Agile failures would be instructive. Also useful would be information on Agile projects that end up in court for breach of contract.
On the opposite side of failure, it would also be useful if Agile projects submitted data on productivity and quality to the International Software Benchmark Standards Group (ISBSG.org).
This is an Australian non-profit that has data on about 5000 software projects, and is adding new ones at perhaps 500 per year. However few are Agile projects in spite of the wide usage of Agile.
Mark
I would love to contribute, but from my experience: there is no such thing as Scrum failure. Scrum is a process to help manage processes. True Scrum projects never fail. Scrum projects are occasionally perceived as having failed, only when team follow their own pseudo-Scrum, and self-managed teams in general fail when their goals are not clear, and their leaders do not have the courage to remove those who refuse to play by the team’s rules. I can say this, not as a consultant, or someone with anything to sell. I say this as a Development Manager, who has seen Scrum work miracles.
Regards,
HL
I’m not sure “failure” is the term anyone used, but I have been involved in a number of “abnormal terminations” of projects that were at least advertised as being agile by the people involved. One of them involved an investment firm who hired an “Agile guru” to assemble a team of fellow expert consultants to rebuild their entire CRM system, using a tool described as “platform-independent and agile architecture” named LANSA. They had scrums going constantly in the “war room” and kept on pushing out releases, but were never able to deliver one that the customers accepted and the whole thing died after several years and millions of dollars. Fairly or unfairly, blamed the “failure” on the leader and Agile/Scrum methodology.
I was involved as a participant in two other Agile/Scrum projects, one large and one small, neither of which delivered anything of value to the clients. Perhaps, as stated above, these are failures by the people and not the methodology, but can’t that be said about all methodologies? The failures are still attributed to the system/philosophy, and I think think it is valid. The methodology may not have played the major role, but it certainly was a significant contributor. In fact, I have never seen a completely successful Agile/Scrum project – they all seem to drag on forever, or until they run out of funding.
Fresh Baked – I think we agree on this point. I don’t think Agile/Scrum/Kanban ever actually fail. I think projects fail, organizations and teams fail to implement Agile correctly but that isn’t a process failure. Maybe I should’ve called it “Agile Project Failures”. Even those failures can be good if they allowed projects to be killed as appropriate.
When I hear statements claiming that 75% of waterfall projects fail but Agile NEVER fails, y bulls**t detector rings off the hook. Even without knowing anything about agile (I know a bit) I can say that there is something not right. If someone is going to claim that Agile never fails but the project members fail, then all we have here is faith healing – “You did not have enough faith for God to heal you.”
A Journal of project failures would be very useful to those in Agile and those considering it.
Very nice article, but it was posted in 2008 and there has still not been any response with the failed SCRUM implementations.
I am looking to initiate agile projects with in my company, but need solid evidence for and against SCRUM. Hope someone posts some thing, eagerly waiting…