Can there be more to Scrum than… Scrum?

or: the evolution towards what I now call “ScrumPlus“.

Over the years I assembled a framework of roles, practices and experience in Agile delivery of fixed price projects as an external IT supplier (consultancy). Starting with eXtreme Programming (2003), it was expanded with Scrum in 2004 (when I certified from Ken Schwaber, quite unforgettable). Still, due to specific circumstances (local market, consultancy perspective, etc.) we always did just that little bit more.

The essence of my framework has not really changed. But it has always been a struggle to name it properly.

In 2008-2009 I used the very personally inspired My.Fragility. As that reflects how Scrum ‘saved’ me, how it set me free to work better with teams, customers and management. The gigantic relief of being free to be fragile, personally and with people (as opposed to bossy-ish command-and-control that management traditionally tried to force me into).

At that time my professional position blocked the use of my framework. But keeping it alive via this blog and in personal writings eventually revived me via Capgemini Belgium (yes, still consultancy): rolling out my framework and tools, a representative in the Agile Consortium Belgium and certified as Professional ScrumMaster I at Ken’s Scrum.org.

Time to use our Community of Practice blog and a (more corporate) name: ScrumPlus. As that confirms that we do Scrum, but also more:

• We explicitly define our engineering standards as Quality Loops;
• We add time to (1) transform a Vision into a Product Backlog (enhance ‘Ready’) and to (2) do a hand-over to customer’s staff. But not breaking the continuity nor weakening the Sprintly ‘Done’.

I willingly admit that this is possible with ‘pure’ Scrum as well, but the ScrumPlus framework is at least valuable in the local adoption of Scrum. And in my professional and market circumstances that is a big win.