Scrum is a ‘light-weight” methodology and is usually easily adopted by small organizations. However, when working with large-scale and even global organizations, Scrum adoption is anything but easy or “light-weight”. The majority of barriers to adoption, however, aren’t related to developers, development practices or skill but are rooted in the organization. This presentation explores the top 20 barriers to scrum adoption and organizational transformation. It includes a mindmap with dozens more. Contact me if you would like a full-size pdf of the mindmap.

1. Organizational Barriers and
Impediments to
Big Scrum Implementations
Darian Rashid
Agile Trainer and Coach
darian@agileethos.com

3. Module-Based Scrum Teams and
Horizontal Slices
GUI scrum team
Business Logic Scrum team
Database Scrum team
“How do I demo a driver?”
“As the system,
I’d like to manage my memory
so that my memory is managed”
O RG

4. Distributed Teams
“The sun never sets on our
development empire”
O RG

5. Hardware and Embedded Systems
Used as an excuse NOT to practice Scrum
O RG

6. Department of Facilities
“Tear down
these cubes!”
O RG

7. Security Policies
“utkubmiT”
O RG

8. Individual Evaluations and Incentives
nt
geme
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9. Velocity Used to Compare Teams
nt
geme
an a
M

10. Fear and Safety
• Fear of raising issues
• “The daily beatings”
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geme
an a
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11. PO Decisions Are Pushed to the
Devevelopment Team(s)
Hmmm…
Chinese or Italian
tonight?
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du ip
P ro sh
er
O wn

12. Multiple Backlogs And/Or Product
Owners For the Same Team
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du ip
P ro sh
er
O wn

13. Product Owner Proxys (POPs)
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Pro rsh
ne
Ow

14. Little or No Release Planning
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Pro rsh
ne
Ow

15. ScrumMasters Not Empowered
sters
M a
m
Scru

16. Part Time and Rotating “Admin”
ScrumMasters
sters
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ru mM
Sc

17. Little or No Infrastructure
al
hnic
T ec

18. Defects are Counted Toward Velocity
ua lity
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19. Manager == PO &&
Manager == SM &&
Manager == Technical Lead
!!!
^$ %&
@

20. Bottom-Up Deployment
“Scrum is a practice for developers”
hip
ders
L ea