Is Your Organization Getting Value from Scrum?

Is Your Organization Getting Value from Scrum?

Your teams are doing daily standups, running sprints, and holding retrospectives. So you're doing Scrum, right? Maybe. But not in the way that matters. 

Here's what many leaders miss about Scrum: it's not a project management framework. It's a learning system built on empirical process control.

That difference is everything. Let me explain what I mean.

Empirical process control has three pillars: transparency, inspection, and adaptation. The idea is simple: in complex work like software development, you can't predict everything upfront. So instead, you make things visible, examine what's actually happening, and adjust based on evidence.

The above approach is fundamentally different from traditional project management, which assumes you can define all requirements upfront, estimate accurately, and execute according to plan. Many organizations I have worked with say they've adopted Scrum. But when I look closer, here's what I actually see:

They have the ceremonies, but not the empiricism.

Teams hold daily standups where everyone reports status to the Scrum Master rather than coordinating work among themselves. That's not transparency. That's theater. Teams run sprints, but leadership still demands fixed-scope roadmaps with delivery dates set quarters in advance. That's not adaptation. That's Waterfall with shorter cycles.

Teams hold retrospectives but never actually change anything meaningful because "that's just how things work here." That's not inspection. That's venting.

Here's the uncomfortable question: Are your teams using Scrum to learn faster and build better products? Or are they using Scrum terminology to make their existing process look more modern?

What Empirical Process Control Actually Requires

If you genuinely want Scrum to work, you need to embrace some things that might make you uncomfortable:

You have to accept that you don't know everything upfront. This means letting go of the demand for perfect certainty. Yes, you need forecasts and plans. But those forecasts should update as the team learns, not stay frozen because changing them feels like failure.

You have to make work actually visible. Not just "what's the status" visible, but "what are we learning" visible. What assumptions are we testing? What did we discover this sprint? What evidence do we have that we're building the right thing? Most organizations track outputs (features shipped) while ignoring outcomes (customer problems solved).

You have to empower teams to adapt. This is the hardest part. If teams discover something during a sprint that changes their understanding, they need the authority to adjust. Not ask permission. Not escalate for approval. Actually adapt. If every decision requires three layers of sign-off, you're not doing empirical process control. You're doing command-and-control with Scrum vocabulary.

You have to measure what matters. Are you measuring how much your teams ship or how much value they create? Are you tracking velocity as a productivity metric (which it's not) or as a planning tool (which it is)? Are you celebrating learning or only celebrating delivery?

Questions to Ask Your Teams

If you want to know whether your organization is truly practicing Scrum or just performing Scrum theater, here are some questions worth asking:

• "When was the last time you changed your approach mid-sprint based on what you learned?" If the answer is never, your process isn't empirical.

• "What experiments are you running this sprint?" If the team looks confused, they're not inspecting and adapting. They're just executing.

• "Show me evidence that the features you shipped last quarter actually solved customer problems." If they can't, you're measuring the wrong things.

• "What would you change about how we work if you could change anything?" If they say "nothing" or hesitate to be honest, you don't have the transparency required for empiricism to work.

• "When you discover something important during a sprint, what happens?" If the answer involves waiting for the next planning session or escalating to leadership, you've created a system that prevents adaptation.

The Bottom Line

Scrum is powerful, but only if you embrace the empiricism at its core. That means accepting uncertainty, making real information visible, and giving teams the authority to adapt when they learn something new. It also means measuring outcomes, not just outputs, and letting go of the illusion of control in exchange for actual responsiveness.

Most organizations aren't ready for that trade. They want the efficiency of Scrum without the discomfort of empiricism. They want their teams to "be agile" while still operating in a command-and-control culture.

You can't have it both ways.

Here's my challenge: Take an honest look at how your teams actually work. Are they learning and adapting? Or are they just following a process that looks like Scrum but operates like disguised Waterfall? The ceremonies don't matter. The approach does.

If you're not genuinely embracing empirical process control, you're not doing Scrum. You're doing Scrum theater. And that's just expensive theater that doesn't produce better products.

What's one thing you could change this week to make your organization more empirical and less theatrical?