Scrum was born as the savior of development teams.
Now, in too many companies, it’s turned into a corporate religion with more sermons than miracles.
And like any bureaucratic religion... it either reforms, or it dies.
Scrum: from agile revolution to organizational theater
Years ago, when someone said "we're agile," people smiled.
Today, it means: "brace yourself for more meetings, more metrics, and more PowerPoints."
Once, companies hired Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches like rare Pokémon.
Now? They're laying them off, merging their roles, or keeping them as ceremony police.
The slow death of technical excellence ⚰️
Scrum doesn't ship technical practices out of the box.
Without a strong engineering commitment — tests, CI/CD, TDD, living architecture — the framework becomes a conveyor belt of broken features.
The result:
- Code that ages worse than a banana forgotten in a drawer.
- Deadlines that dictate more than quality.
- Developers stuck in chronic burnout.
The mutant Scrum Master
In too many organizations, the Scrum Master is gone.
Instead, we have the Scrum-PM-Dev-Tester-CoffeeMaker: a hybrid creature that doesn't lead or serve, just survives.
A role meant to protect agility now spends the day filling spreadsheets and chasing tickets instead of empowering teams.
Management overload and the cost of ignorance
There's a growing management overload in many "agile" organizations: too many decision-makers with too little technical background.
This creates a dangerous loop:
- Decisions are made without understanding the engineering impact.
- Expensive mistakes are repeated in the name of "delivery".
- Teams feel they're being managed, not led.
When non-technical managers dictate technical priorities, the result is often waste, rework, and long-term pain disguised as "progress".
The Agile Industrial Complex
Agility has been packaged into certifications, workshops, and consulting packages that promise transformation but deliver empty mechanics.
Scrum becomes a theater where everything is done "by the book" but without soul, values, or real continuous improvement.
Reform it or throw it overboard?
If you still want to rescue Scrum, here's the recipe:
How Scrum could improve:
- Less ceremony, more value: if the daily stand-up lasts 20 minutes, something's broken.
- Integrate technical practices: TDD, CI/CD, Pair Programming… without this, forget about quality.
- Clear roles: a Scrum Master is not your Project Manager, boss, or on-call developer.
- Real autonomy: the team decides, not the hierarchy.
- Technical literacy in management: decision-makers must understand the cost and complexity of engineering work.
Alternatives that might shine brighter:
- Kanban: flows like water, no forced iterations.
- Extreme Programming (XP): hardcore engineering, quality above all.
- Lean: less waste, more focus on what matters.
- Mix & Match: take what works, drop what doesn't — like a good buffet.
Conclusion: Scrum isn't the enemy... but your implementation might be
Scrum doesn't have to die, but the zombie, bureaucratic, tech-agnostic Scrum we see in too many companies... that one should be buried.
Preferably with one last retrospective... and no sticky notes.