What percentage of Scrum teams do you believe are "properly cross-functional and self-organizing"? And could you point me to examples of people losing their Scrum certifications for not living up to that standard?
> What percentage of Scrum teams do you believe are "properly cross-functional and self-organizing"?
About the same percentage as that of “Agile” software development shops that put people and interactions above processes and tools.
OTOH, at any place that is considering implementing either, there are decision makers who can influence (or in the case of Scrum more than Agile, authoritatively direct) whether or not that's the case, so for them, at least, it's worth distinguishing between problems with Scrum as prescribed and problems which often occur because decision-makers decided to ignore key parts of Scrum-as-prescribed.
Most nominally "Agile" shops are in effect doing Scrum, so I'm not sure that answer helps your case. Either way, it sounds like we agree the "good Scrum" shop is at best rare.
Given that, I think it's worth considering that the problem is Scrum. Especially given that Scrum is not just a process, but an organization and an army of "certified" people that sell services.
When something generally doesn't work for its stated purpose but keeps making money, I think it's worth asking what its real purpose is. E.g., things like crystals and psychics. As Eric Hoffer wrote, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
> Most nominally "Agile" shops are in effect doing Scrum
No, most nominally Agile shops are also nominally doing Scrum, but actually doing not-Scrum in a not-Agile context, largely due to sabotage of both core principles of Agile and foundational elements of Scrum by management.
It doesn't matter what name and superficial ritual you put on the process if it's all window dressing over top-down disempowering command-and-control by persons who are neither doing the work nor experts on the work.
Which isn't to say that the Agile and Scrum bodies of work aren't part of the problem: neither really addresses as a key point how the team effectuates ownership of process and how interaction with management works, which means those gaps get filled in (or rendered moot, in the first case) in ways which compromise what those bodies of work do prescribe because.
Lean, which comes from basically the same perspective (while they don't cite exactly the same values as expressed in the Agile Manifesto, being Lean essentially implies being Agile and vice versa) and is a good body of knowledge to draw from alongside Agile, is better in this regard, and so places nominally drawing on Lean seen to be more likely to be doing what they say, because Lean doesn't leave as much of the core vital parts without good guidance.
Which is a really impressive con. Generally the point of certification is to make clear you're getting the official version. E.g., doctors and lawyers self-police because they know it's harmful to have quacks running loose. But somehow Scrum has been able to keep making money despite not bothering with that.
