My experiences of coaching teams and hand-holding organisations in taking up Scrum have revealed a curious inductive pattern depending on the type of work environment. A group which is generally genuinely responsible and transparent would take to the practices of Scrum in letter and spirit, like a duck to water. However, equally true is the case of an organisation/group wallowing in apathy and complacency. Such organisations have a very large portion of managers who are essentially set in their ways and have an overriding (but short sighted) interest in maintaining status quo.  Any change makes them deeply uncomfortable. It takes time to understand just how deeply buried this resistance is in the sub-conscious of such managers. They are befuddled and unable to view a very different future which at the same time is frighteningly unfamiliar with any enthusiasm. As someone said “the raison d’etre of middle managers is to resist any improvement”, which implies that the management layer has been set up to run a bureaucracy and not an ever improving organisation. This in itself is a very dismal revelation and an example of what Scrum uncannily exposes: Your management is less than useless, they are actually a liability. Their only use is to run things in the same chaotic manner today and tomorrow and the day after…and their weapons of choice being pressure and manipulation.  The reactions of managers who are suddenly confronted with Scrum, something that requires much greater transparency and direct execution, ranges from apathy to passive resistance to delusional arguments and even the dismissal of the entire idea of Scrum as unworkable (however without a clear line of reasoning based on knowledge).  So the questions to consider are: are you prepared to make deep, possibly unsettling changes for a better tomorrow? Will you do it by infusing a truly transparent culture? (Transparency need not mean surrendering your trade secrets; It first of all means being honest to yourself).  You will in all possibility have to catch the pig! And Scrum is an excellent means and in this manner of engendering transparency, is an end in itself.

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