I’m a member of the Scrum Development group on Yahoo!, and after lurking for more than a month, have joined the conversations going on there. A recent thread that I responded to was started by a gentleman in a semi-government organization dealing with some major issues while implementing Scrum. His manager is unsupportive, his team does not see him as a leader (he was previously a peer), and due to a lack of responsibility being put on the team the entire process has gone down the tubes. He’s been dealing with this for a more than a year and his frustration comes through in his writing.

This leads to the question: is Scrum for everyone?

When I spoke at RailsConf about Agile Development with Scrum one question I was asked was whether or not Scrum is a good fit for all teams. In short my answer is it could be, but you might run into challenges. Some of the biggies that stand out are:

• No top-down buy-in from management
• Project managers are unwilling or unable to use a new method
• Micro-management abounds and there is seemingly no way of changing that
• General ignorance of how Scrum works and its’ benefits

The last point is the easiest to deal with – education. The other three are tougher nuts to crack. With Scrum leadership is stressed over management. My advice: lead by example, start small, and prove its worth. Scrum isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition; the larger the organization the longer it may take. Stay positive and keep moving forward with it. The results will speak for themselves.

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