Are you new to Agile, or are you coaching an organization that's attempting a transformation? While there are tons of resources that teach you how to be Agile, we highlight how NOT to be Agile via Antipatterns - common practices that at first seem alluring, or even helpful, but which in practice are an impediment.

"We can't start our work until we get sign-off on the spec."

"Our Product Owner and ScrumMaster are the same person."

"The chief architect hasn't approved that yet."

"I was assigned that task by my Manager."

"Our VP of Engineering said we're doing this wrong."

"We're in a hurry, so we'll do QA after this Sprint."

"My boss is on my team."

"He got pulled on to an emergency project this Sprint."

"We usually just skip Retrospectives since we've been doing this for a while."

"Our Daily Scrum runs 45 minutes since we have a lot to talk about."

"We talk to our Product Owner about every two weeks during planning."

"Our team changes depending on what needs to be done during a Sprint."

"We didn't update our card wall because we have too much work to do."

"Our VP said we need to improve our velocity, since the other team is faster."

"I need to write a status report this week so my manager knows what I've done."

"We need to build a prototype first so we make sure the architecture is correct."

Get started by submitting an Antipattern above. Teaching a course? Hand out decks of our antipattern cards to your next ScrumMaster course during Q&A and let students answer questions for each other by holding up the appropriate card when they recognize an antipattern. Facilitate the conversation about the antipattern, and let your class teach itself!

What's "Go Fish"?

While implementing Scrum, perhaps you've noticed that people stick to their old patterns and try to label them as "Scrum". They attempt to play this new game of Scrum, while sticking to their old games. It's very hard to play chess while your opponent is insisting on playing Go Fish.

 

The Cards

We're currently a few cards short of a deck (take that however you wish ;), but we'll have decks to order, or PDFs to print, shortly. Promise.

The Book

What will become of all these antipatterns? They're being compiled into a book, with each chapter based on a specific antipattern, with common examples, and the antidote to the antipattern.

Stay tuned! Email us if you'd want to get involved or to be notified when the book is in print.

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