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Zombie Scrum
Survival Guide
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The Professional Scrum Series by
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The Professional Scrum Series from Pearson Addison-Wesley and
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Zombie Scrum
Survival Guide
A Journey to Recovery
Christiaan Verwijs
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Johannes Schartau
Barry Overeem
Boston • Columbus • New York • San Francisco • Amsterdam • Cape Town
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944524
Cover and interior illustrations by Thea Schukken
Copyright © 2021 Pearson Education, Inc.
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ISBN-13: 978-0-13-652326-0
ISBN-10: 0-13-652326-9
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Zombie Scrum Survival Guide is dedicated to all the nameless victims
and unsung heroes in the ongoing struggle against Zombie Scrum.
We are here to support you.
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C o nte nt s
Foreword by Dave West xiii
Foreword by Henri Lipmanowicz xvii
Acknowledgments xix ptg34576569
About the Authors xxi
Chapter 1 Getting Started 1
Purpose of This Book 4
Do You Need This Book? 5
How This Book Is Organized 6
No Time to Lose: Off You Go! 8
Chapter 2 First Aid Kit 11
Part I (Zombie) Scrum 13
Chapter 3 A Primer on Zombie Scrum 15
The State of Scrum 17
Zombie Scrum 18
Sy mptom 1: Zombie Scrum Teams Don’t Know the Needs of
Their Stakeholders 19
Symptom 2: Zombie Scrum Teams Don’t Ship Fast 20
Symptom 3: Zombie Scrum Teams Don’t Improve (Continuously) 21
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Contents
Sy mptom 4: Zombie Scrum Teams Don’t Self-Organize to
Overcome Impediments 23
It’s All Connected 24
Isn’t This Just Cargo Cult Scrum or Dark Scrum? 24
Is There Hope for Zombie Scrum? 24
Experiment: Diagnose Your Team Together 25
Steps 27
Our Findings 28
Now What? 29
Chapter 4 The Purpose of Scrum 31
It’s All about Complex Adaptive Problems 32
Problems 33
Complex, Adaptive Problems 34
Complexity, Uncertainty, and Risk 35
Empiricism and Process Control Theory 36
Empiricism and the Scrum Framework 37
What the Scrum Framework Makes Possible 38
Scrum: An Evolving Set of Minimal Boundaries to Work Empirically 39 ptg34576569
Zombie Scrum and the Efficiency Mindset 40
What about Simple Problems? 42
Now What? 44
Part II Build What Stakeholders Need 45
Chapter 5 Symptoms and Causes 47
Why Bother Involving Stakeholders? 49
Who Are the Stakeholders, Actually? 50
Validating Assumptions about Value 51
Why Are We Not Involving Stakeholders? 52
We Don’t Really Understand the Purpose of Our Product 52
We Make Assumptions about What Stakeholders Need 55
We Create Distance between Developers and Stakeholders 56
We See Business and IT As Separate Things 59
We Don’t Allow Product Owners to Actually Own the Product 61
We Measure Output over Value 63
viii
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Contents
We Believe That Developers Should Only Write Code 64
We Have Stakeholders Who Don’t Want to Be Involved 66
Healthy Scrum 68
Who Should Get to Know the Stakeholders? 68
When to Involve Stakeholders 69
Now What? 71
Chapter 6 Experiments 73
Experiments: Getting to Know Your Stakeholders 74
Start a Stakeholder Treasure Hunt 74
Create Transparency with the Stakeholder Distance Metric 76
Give the Stakeholder a Desk Close to the Scrum Team 78
Decorate the Team Room with the Product Purpose 80
Experiments: Involving Stakeholders in Product Development 81
Invite Stakeholders to a “Feedback Party” 81
Go on a User Safari 84
Guerrilla Testing 86
Experiments: Keeping Your Focus on What Is Valuable 88
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Limit the Maximum Length of Your Product Backlog 88
Map Your Product Backlog on an Ecocycle 90
Express Desired Outcomes, Not Work to Be Done 94
Now What? 96
Part III Ship It Fast 97
Chapter 7 Symptoms and Causes 99
The Benefits of Shipping Fast 102
Complexity in Your Environment 102
Complexity in Your Product 104
The Bottom Line: Not Shipping Fast Is a Sign of Zombie Scrum 105
Why Are We Not Shipping Fast Enough? 105
We Don’t Understand How Shipping Fast Reduces Risk 106
We Are Impeded by Plan-Driven Governance 108
We Don’t Understand the Competitive Advantage of Shipping Fast 110
We Don’t Remove Impediments to Shipping Fast 113
We Work on Very Large Items during a Sprint 114
ix
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