I confess I am torn between two competing drives. One the faux agile the other zombie scrum. Both describe the same problem with the same issues and results. But they say them in two different ways.
Zombie scrum is the analogy between zombies and people in tech just blinding following scrum without passion or understanding.
A note on this for those of you that know that zombies are not the same all over the world. In England the zombies are usually fast moving desperately hungry running around at top speed attacking. This is the same type as in World War Z. Then you get the slow moving USA zombie from walking dead and others. The zombie type we are using is the slow american one.
The imagery for the Zombie scrum is easy to illustrate and have contemporary help with all the Zombie movies and TV series out.
You can see the team going through the motions they know are now meaningless and is done simply to appease the people of influence that wanted to implement something new. Something new that is easy, quick and simple that will make others miraculously change their old slow ways and suddenly become twice as fast, engaged and happy.
Faux Agile is the same thing. Faux means fake or imitation. Its agile in name only and only looks like agile from a few hundred meters away. Very much the same as Zombies look like normal humans from far enough.
So what are a the causes of Zombie scrum and Faux Agile.
1. Upper level mandated implementation without first hand experience.
2. Management Consultant’s new plan.
3. No experienced Agile coaches, Scrum masters.
4. Limited management training.
5. Limited training.
6. Underfunded change management project.
7. Excuse for headcount reduction.
8. Limited buy in from rest of the company.
But you could simplify it to: “It looks so easy surely it can’t be that hard.”. So with this simple change, minimal investment is now to bring a doubling of productivity.
That brings us back to the question of Zombies or Faux. Faux describes the problem more correctly but Zombies so the human response better.
I think I’ll stick with Faux.
Christchurch Scrum 