Shock Therapy: A Bootstrap for Hyper-Productive Scrum

Abstract

A properly implemented Scrum framework enforces a few simple constraints that cause a team to self-organize into a state that achieves 5 to 10 times waterfall performance. Yet the majority of Scrum teams never achieve this design goal. Teams do not know how to sequence work to deliver working software at the end of a sprint. They do not know how to work with a Product Owner to get the backlog in a ready state before bringing it into a sprint and do not know how to self-organize into a hyper-productive state during a sprint. A pattern is emerging at MySpace in California and Jayway in Sweden, for bootstrapping high performing Scrum teams. Rigorous implementation of Scrum by an experienced coach creates a total immersion experience akin to Shock Therapy. Teams are trained on exactly how to implement Scrum with no deviations for several sprints. These teams consistently achieve better than 240% improvement in velocity within a few weeks. They are then able to self-organize on their own to continue to improve performance. For many developers and managers, the experience is a wake up call to agile awareness. Unfortunately, management tends to disrupt hyper-productive teams by disabling key constraints in the Scrum framework. Team velocity then falls back into mediocrity. Velocity data is provided on five hyper-productive teams at MySpace and one team at Jayway. In all but one case, management “killed the golden goose.”