Is Scrum Agile?

Can you achieve Agility by following Scrum? Maybe, but not without being intentional about the Agile values and principles. For a free book, continue below...

I've published a book called "Starting Agile" that is designed to help you start your team's Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I'm giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube. You can signup for a copy at this link:

[Mkenschlorf]

You did an excellent job on this video Mark! Very well said and illustrated! Be encouraged!

[corneliuspryor]

You are an excellent instructor- love the format

[frankwilliams]

Mark, excellent. I have been trying to explain that Scrum supports the Agile principles and is not Agile in itself. Thanks for the video.

[sanmaj]

Great Video. Thanks for uploading it in youtube.

[wildforager]

Roles and Responsibility, Scope should be clear. People who like to just escape the moment of difficult situation misuse or abuse the agile.

[AgileLounge]

Excellent Mark. A reminder from my mentor Beedle: Scrum is Lean and Agile is Lean + Customer (People) Implication. Our Coach AF would love to have you on our show Dare Real Agile, would you ?

[cintiamaldonado]

Hi Mark, thanks for the content, it's great. The link to download the book doesn't work for me. Is it possible to access it in a different way? Thank you!

[erikdale]

Great info and content but your editors need to stay on the business landscape as others have eluded to. The rockets and wandering through scenes is beyond confusing. A channel w this great of insights will grow tremendously with on par editing. Thanks for the helpful content.

[RickBeall]

In this video you seemed to just be repeating the same sentence in different ways. I think you needed particular example where someone is doing SCRUM but not AGILE. It is easy to see AGILE without SCRUM since SCRUM is just a set of roles and meetings.

[benjaminvanruyssevelt]

Scrum is a framework, which is a model and therefore inherently superficial. Any framework should support understanding Agile values in a learning environment. So yes, Scrum is great way to learn about Agile. It, unfortunately, is also very easy to fall into some trap of implementing Scrum as an organisational model and get really frustrated about how Scrum does not support your organisation's goals. Your organisation should be optimised for reaching your goals, not for following some framework. If a fairy godmother comes in and sprinkles Agile fairy-dust in everybody's eyes, that might also work - why bother with Scrum in that case? I know of quite a few large, multinational, global digital companies that are very Agile and only utilise some roles, artefacts and events which are part of Scrum.
There is an industry that will sell you books, trainings, coaching and what not to support an 'Agile Transformation' with the intent of making teams use Scrum. I have seen a lot of value being created in that process; transparency, focus and renewed energy and momentum being some of those. I have also seen organisations stop changing and evolving because "the Agile/Scrum Transformation was completed."
When talking to C-suite folks, Scrum Terminology and Kanban boards are very recognisable features, also the aspect of high-performance teams is very attractive. In that sense, I am very grateful to all the marketing around Scrum. It is a bit of a trojan horse, as discovering and resolving impediments to Agility when executing Scrum can be a bit of a soul-searching process and seem quite contradictory to the 'business case for Agile' at times.
Scrum is not the end-state of Agile, it's more of a start on your specific journey. Any Scrum application should be based on an understanding of the facts that: 1. Scrum is collection of practices that existed before the Scrum guide was written and these same practices are continuously evolving - and 2. These practices exist to implement habits that will guide learning about values through intentional behaviour.