Agile Anti-Patterns

An antipattern is a recurring practice or behaviour that creates harm. In the context of Scrum and Agile, an antipattern would be something the reduces the team’s collaboration, focus, quality etc.

Patterns, when applied well and not overused, provide a guide to solving repetitive problems rapidly. A good pattern provides enough background information to help you solve the problem, without asserting that it is the best or only solution in all instances.

Scrum, Agile, Kanban, and other frameworks and mindsets like them, are sets of behavioural design patterns. In Scrum, we have Scrum PLOP (Pattern Language of Programs) that documents known patterns of effective behaviour.

Examples of Anti pattens in the Scrum world?

• Team members who’re part of three teams.
• Stakeholders demanding the team start a new Work item mid Sprint
• Focus on speed over quality
• Ignoring Technical Debt
• Hardening Sprints

Below, you can browse through our growing collection of articles about Anti-Patterns – what causes them, and what you can do to resolve or avoid them.