I am Groot … I am Scrum

Disclaimer: They are imaginary conversations resulting from my own understanding of real conversations I have had with different people and teams.

What method / approach do you use?

Scrum.

Do you use the X, Y, Z …  practices?

No.

Sorry, but without these practices this is not Scrum.

It is Scrum. Our way of using Scrum!

We are using Sprints!

What features do you have delivered last Sprints?

We have delivered some requirements specification.

That is not a Sprint. The Sprint was explicitly defined to end with a set of potentially releasable features.

 

Our collaborators use Scrum and they call that a Sprint. 

Another team and another context …

How often you deliver?

Sometimes daily and usually after few days.

What method / approach do you use?

Scrum.

You are much close to Continuous Delivery. Why are you saying that your approach it is Scrum? They do not deliver more often that one week. They have a ceremonial to support a potential release that cannot fit in less than a week. More, this is the Scrum competitive advantage: if they do not deliver in less then a week and could prepare in advance the work for that week/weeks (Sprint), they will have a superior velocity. This is the explicit intentions of the Scrum creator.

I do not want to talk about him. He does not offer a good approach for software. 

Maybe you are right, but he had provide the Scrum definition, and this is what the whole world understands by Scrum. If you have found a better but different approach in your context, this is a good hybrid, but is no longer Scrum.

The message/intention problem - maybe you do not believe it, but also in software development different practices and methods have names and definitions.
You are not Groot! You cannot use whatever practices in your context and put the label Scrum. You will transmit the wrong message to anyone outside to your team, but also inside to your team.

Interface problem – the main aspect that it is visible outside the development side, it is the proposed interface - the life-cycle - between development and customer and development and other enterprise teams. When you say Scrum, I know which kind of “contracted” interface - life-cycle - you are proposing. You cannot have your local convention that override industry well known definitions. You can have any kind of process you need/want but is honest and professional to use the right label in order to transmit the right message.    

  

Some teams use Waterfall and put the Scrum label on it …

Some teams use Continuous Delivery and put the Scrum label on it …

Some teams use Lean Exploratory Startup and put the Scrum label on it …

How could be that right? How could you differentiate the different approaches that you will use in different contexts? How you could differentiate the context of different teams and different products?

I am Groot!