Why I'm done with Scrum

My first foray into Agile was with a product team back in 2004-2005. It was my first “real” job out of college, and my first experience with a death march. During the death march, I was struck on how bad the idea of death marching was. Working weekends, long hours etc. were a sign of failure not on the development team, but our a failure to plan, set expectations, and deliver frequently.

This rather horrible experience pushed me to explore better options, leading me into Scrum and XP. For a team that released once every year or two, delivering (and having acceptance) around stories etc. were very helpful in turning our team around.

So I’ve had a lot of success with Scrum – but I’ve had greater success in ditching it. Here’s a few (of my many) my reasons why: