A friend who happens to be the CEO of a recent start-up asked me that question.
“Nope, you cannot. You can’t make any team members do what they don’t want to do, ” was my answer.
“But I’m investing my hard-earned money into building my dream software application. I don’t want to wait for months and just have some documents made, not the actual software.
I want my team members to understand what’s most important and focus all of their energies onto helping me achieve the goal. Sure, there will be challenges and risks, but I should get early signals so that I can inspect and adapt. Isn’t it something what Scrum offers?”
“Certainly that’s what Scrum offers. Sure, you can inspire your team members for using Scrum but compelling doesn’t work.” That’s anti-scrum.
“So how do I do that?”
“Be a Servant Leader. Businessmen who want to really leverage Scrum must not treat their people as if their people are serving them. They should understand that Scrum works only when each team member buys into the goals of the project and commits himself in achieving the goal.”
“I understand, so better I go through basics of Scrum once more.”
That’s the point. Get thorough at basics. If you have a strong foundation, even if one of your projects fails, you can win over the long run. But if you foundation is weak, you will be tempted to think that Scrum–or any other framework for that matter–doesn’t work.
It’s not about the framework; it’s about getting the foundation right and executing it correctly. So go make that happen.