If you were asked this simple question

— Do you expect to be doing Scrum in 20 years from now?

your answer would necessarily be no. Because you know how much the world, and in particular the industry, changes in time.
You are quite sure that, if you were doing Scrum in 2045, something would be very wrong: i) either the world had frozen until then, or ii) you would be completely at odds with reality.
Now lets go for the fairly logical assumption that you will not be operating a psychosis 20 years from now. Its straightforward.
Therefore, you admit that you would be at odds with reality in 2045.
This leads you to the conclusion that you will surely want to move away from Scrum somewhere between today and 2045.
So you have to admit that, between today and 2045, you will be merely postponing the inevitable until you do away with Scrum.
Therefore, not only do you not have a reason to keep doing Scrum, but also the reason that made you do something else by 2045 is not affected by the timing. Besides this, Scrum was created more than 20 years ago.
Therefore, you arrive at the logical conclusion that, even if you stopped doing Scrum today, you would already be late.
Take from this that there is today no reason at all why anyone would be managing teams with Scrum.

The heading image of this article (from this source) is an illustration of how I see the daily Scrum ceremonies. For some surely remarkable reason, never have I heard a single highly qualified engineer question the following. The daily stand-up is performed, they believe, because it is important, that is, because the team does something in those ceremonies that is important enough for them to do it everyday as clockwork. Now if this was the case, then one should also admit that this very important thing, whatever it is, would be performed many times a day, because it is important, that is, surely not just one single time each day for just about 15 minutes. We don’t do important things just 15 minutes a day at a pre-set time, we do them whenever circumstance justifies so, precisely because they are more important than the other things, so they take the time of the other things when they need to happen. Surely that importance is incompatible with delaying an important matter discussion until the next day huddle. But if we assume this is the case, we should ask why then do we need a daily stand-up?
We have to accept there is some other reason that distinguishes this Scrum ceremony from the supposedly same things that are done during the workday. To understand what that is, we need to look at the specifics of the interaction in the daily stand-up that distinguish it from the other interactions in which the same activities are performed. Firstly, in the daily stand-up all the team is to be present. Second, in Scrum (but unlike the more evolved Disciplined Agile), the team lead is a necessary participant. Can you guess now what is the single thing that justifies the daily stand-up? Its status reporting. Its control. And to this they call “agile”.
This “agile” is more waterfall than Waterfall itself, because in Waterfall we only prescribe daily control over a project during critical periods. Otherwise the timing for the heartbeat is weekly. And to this they call “agile”.
In Lean management you can understand better the abomination of this practice. In Lean, practices follow their own cadences and they happen when they need to instead of merely because the calendar says so. We do not block the flow of work and value with a rock in the middle of the stream every 24 yards.
But as I said, never have I heard a single highly qualified engineer raise this issue, much less solve it. This is of course, because empirical control processes are designed to suppress conflicts about the governing variables. A form of functional lobotomy. And to this they call “agile”.

My inquiries into the industry “agile” standards are grey and old, and that is why you can also read about it in this article.

The rest of this article is based on Al Shalloway’s approach to what is now called Flow for Enterprise Transformation, the state-of-the-art knowledge system that his consulting company developed during the most part of the Agile experiment since its inception, and that was integrated by PMI in its approach for Agile management at the value stream level called DA FLEX. I had three certifications in this method and that is where I come from in this regard. I took the freedom to change very little of Al’s words because they are so perfectly stated, while also adding a few of my own.

Let’s say you were going to buy a car. You walked into the showroom and saw amazing cars and were really excited. You buy the car, have a lot of troubles driving it and when you take it back they respond with:

— Yes, the instructions are simple, but driving the car is difficult to master.
— The car is so sophisticated, it’s not possible to have full predictability.
— Well, we thought this aspect of the car was good enough.
— Most people don’t have trouble with this, but since you do, we have this extra education for you.

How would you react to that? These four attitudes are prevalent in many Agile approaches. If you are a practitioner and wouldn’t accept this for a car I suggest not accepting it for the approach you’re taking to improvement. If you are a consultant, please stop doing it and please help others stop.
Saying something is difficult to master is insidious in that it gives those promoting it permission not to try to get better.
Instead of resign ourselves to a lack of predictability, we should see how much we can get and always get feedback. Looking at a complex problem in a different way often results in a solution that is predictably good. But we’ll never find it if we don’t look for it.
Good enough and too much are not the only alternatives; the use of minimum business increments (MBIs) proves it.
When people don’t understand something about Agile (e.g. tying the big picture to the small task) perhaps it’s not an indication of the person’s inability as much as it’s an indication that something is missing. Scrum has a different education and framework definition approach than Lean, Kanban, Theory of constraints and Flow have, and these are built in DA FLEX but not in Scrum.

The deadly synergy of the four attitudes above results in the following:

i) When someone doesn’t understand something, this attitude will make it easier to just think it’s good enough and just try to explain it better instead of trying to improve it.
ii) When people have difficulty with an approach it’s easier to just shrug our shoulders and explain that it’s difficult to master.
iii) While we can accept that predictability is difficult we should not accept less predictability than we can because our understanding is good enough.

The focus must always be on improving methods and not on following a framework.
The goal is not to be agile at the team level but to achieve business agility across the organization. This manifests both individual and organizational purposes and creates a better place to work. Optimal teams without improvements to the organization is not that useful.

According to the Scrum guide, Scrum is founded on empirical process control theory, or empiricism. Surprisingly, no one seems to challenge that empiricism may not be the best way to base a framework on. On the other hand, DA FLEX is based on the scientific method to overcome the inherent possible cognitive biases. The scientific method is a combination of empiricism and rationalism. It uses empiricism to support or invalidate hypothesis while using rationalism to enable it to create conjectures (i.e., new hypotheses) about how the world works. This combination is more powerful than empiricism alone while being less risky than relying just on academic reasoning.
This mirrors the following paraphrase

Theory without experience is useless, experience without theory is expensive.

Edwards Deming

Several Agile methods, particularly Scrum and most of its derivatives, are based on empiricism, which, while simple to explain, miss many opportunities for a deeper understanding of what is happening. This is not to say we cannot apply the scientific method to Scrum, but doing so requires examining its immutable roles, events, artifacts and rules, possibly leading us to move away from Scrum.

There are a few significant implications of a framework taking on a scientific approach to itself. These include:

i) everything we put forth in the framework is a hypothesis
ii) instead of defending our methods, we welcome, even request, dissent
iii) there cannot be any immutable aspects to the framework

The same way one does not need a complex approach to address a complex problem, as posited by Scrum, one also does not need an empirical approach to address an empirical problem.
DA FLEX is based on the scientific method of making hypotheses, observations and adjusting the hypotheses to fit the data. But no belief or practice is taken as sacrosanct. And deductive logic is encouraged while still requiring the logic to be validated by experience. In addition to this, while Agile was designed and intended to be applied to teams only, DA FLEX takes a systems-thinking point of view which is needed to address organization-wide transformation.

Scrum is a framework. While you are encouraged to add to the framework, certain practices of the framework are sacrosanct – and you are not supposed to change them. As with all frameworks this is to enable a well-defined starting point, however starting with a set framework with core practices that you are not supposed to change tends to have you stick with them longer than you should. Also, not all of Scrum’s practices are applicable everywhere.
While frameworks allow you to add things to them, you often need to change the framework itself. Not all of the prescribed practices in Scrum, which one must do in order to be “doing Scrum” are optimal, or even possible, in all situations.
When a team is being led by someone with only a Scrum certification, they may be reluctant to go away from Scrum because it has them go into territory in which they are not certified and may feel uncomfortable going outside of what they are certified in.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

When and how to transcend Scrum is left unanswered by the Scrum Guide which repeatedly encourages following Scrum practices. As the empirical process that it is, Scrum is a particular case of the more general “single loop learning” approaches as PMI termed them. These processes are designed to achieve intended outcomes and suppress conflicts about the governing variables. This means that, while you can make adjustments based on the results you get, you are not allowed to inquire about the method itself, therefore you are left managing a project with the same intelligence as a thermostat manages temperature. You cannot develop a new method even if one would lead you quicker to a solution to the problem you are facing.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

That lack of options to transcend the framework is justified by the seemingly logical statement that “we need a well-defined set of practices; adding options will cause confusion.”

But this is based on the unproven assumption that options have necessarily to be confusing. This is especially relevant to note in the cases when we are managing knowledge workers, because then it equates to a disenfranchisement of the most important assets of an organization — its people doing the work and creating value. You do surely not fear giving options to highly qualified people doing their jobs. In fact, you should fear the opposite, especially if you are paying their wages or waiting for them to solve your problem.
The answer to the claim above is that giving options is not the problem; the challenge is knowing when to give the option. Too soon and people may not have the opportunity to exploit their current approach, but too late means they are stuck with the same method for longer than they need while other alternatives may be better suited for the challenges at hand.
This becomes ever more impactful the more a team develops maturity in Scrum practices. A simple starting point when it needs to be is good, but we have to enable better learning as people get more advanced.
The key after the start is to provide alternatives now that the people know what the objectives of the Scrum practices are. This requires that the people adopting the practices have been given the objective of the practice. At this point, with a little experience under their belt, a deeper set of options can be provided. The key here is not to abandon practices, but to find better ways of doing what you are doing, getting to the root cause of the issue or take on a new practice if needed.
One doesn’t have to blindly follow Scrum but can use Lean-Thinking to provide better, more cost-effective practices to accomplish the intentions of Scrum.
Regarding navigating complexity, Goldratt and the Theory of Constrains identified the term “inherent simplicity”:

If we dive deep enough we’ll find that there are very few elements at the base – the root causes – which through cause-and-effect connections are governing the whole system.

Eli Goldratt

Scrum is also based on the premise that if you change your organization to follow the Scrum framework, Scrum theory, and Scrum values, then your organization will improve. We believe instead that the right approach is to make a decision as to when it’s more effective to change the organization to fit a framework or when to follow different practices that meet the same objectives of the framework more effectively. Of course, this may take you out of the Scrum framework, so you’d no longer be doing Scrum. However, we don’t think this matters. We should remember that we should focus on our objective and not worry about the particular method of getting there.

Struggling with breaking down stories into small chunks? Scrum intentionally provides no guidance here – it is a framework. Unfortunately, standard decomposition methods don’t take advantage of what’s been learned in the last decade with Behavior Driven Development (BDD). BDD provides a structure for decomposition that enables virtually any problem domain to be decomposed into small stories.

If we see people consistently make the same mistakes we should not attribute the failure to the people, but more to the system. This was established 80 years ago by Deming when he stated that the eco-system people find themselves in causes most of the challenges they experience. Our responsibility therefore is to improve the system, more than managing the people.
This is the anti-thesis of what we hear from many Scrum consultants: “Scrum would work if people would just do it.”

That may be true, but Scrum may not be the best approach for the problem a team faces. This approach retains the problem while modifying Scrum to make it invisible so that the dysfunction is no longer a thorn in the side of the team. There is an implication that if the team would put more effort into it, or take the time to figure Scrum out better, we could avoid these. This is a big, assumption.
Our attitude shift would be to ask “why is it so hard to fix this impediment? Is there a better approach, even if it means going beyond Scrum?”

In particular, consultants and promoters of frameworks must take responsibility when practitioners have trouble. This means to instead keep improving our offerings so our clients have fewer challenges.

Neither the Agile Manifesto nor the Scrum Guide mention the role of management once. The role of management is critical, however. It is ironic that Agile is about changing culture but either ignores or vilifies those in the best position to do it.

To contrast with all of the above, we can say the following regarding DA FLEX.

DA FLEX takes the attitude that the overwhelming majority of people are good and, when put in a good system, will achieve good results.
DA FLEX embraces the mindsets of Theory of Constraints, Lean and Flow, seeing no inconsistency between these. While these may be focused more on what we do, DA FLEX also incorporates models of personal and organizational development, which go well beyond the Agile mindset.
DA FLEX is not based on how to take Agile and scale it across the organization. It starts with a holistic view of the organization to begin with.
DA FLEX takes a pragmatic approach, meaning it focuses on what works, which stems from its scientific nature.

Another source for consideration is impartial and unrelated with the PMI. The BPM CBOK v3.0 [1] cites the concept of “Big Process” by Forrester, as a transformation by means of business processes that changes the organization’s focus from isolated BPM actions and incremental improvement initiatives, towards a transformation program that includes the entire organization with the support of executive leadership. This is the vision of the value stream. It is the performance of cross-functional processes, and not of functional areas or assets, that drives the achievement of true results. The broader the BPM initiative in the organization, the more effective it will be in delivering value. This is what DA FLEX is about.

Now for how long will you still be doing Scrum?

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[1] the Business Process Management Common Body of Knowledge, by the Association of Business Process Management Professionals

The following are quotes from Meister Eckhart’s Sermons.

1. We may perhaps venture to predict that the Christian biologist of the future will turn the Pauline Christology into his own dialect somewhat after the following fashion:
–“The function of religion in the human race is closely analogous to, if not identical with, that of instinct in the lower animals. Religion is the racial will to live; not, however, to live anyhow and at all costs, but to live as human beings, conforming as far as possible to the highest type of humanity. Religion, therefore, acts as a higher instinct, inhibiting all self-destroying and race-destroying impulses in the interest of a larger self than the individual life.”
To turn this statement into theological form it is only necessary to claim that the “perfect man” which the religious instinct is trying to form is “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,” that perfect humanity was once realised in the historical Christ, and that the higher instinct within us, which makes for life and righteousness, and is the source of all the good that we can think, say, or do, may (in virtue of that historical incarnation) be justly called the indwelling Christ.

2. We must be in absolutely constant relation or mental touch with that essence of life which permeates all and which we call God.
This is almost unrecognisable unless we live into it ourselves actually — that is, by a constant turning to the very innermost, deepest consciousness of our real selves or of God in us, for illumination from within, just as we turn to the sun for light, warmth, and invigoration without.

3. Spiritual supremacy and illumination thus realised through the development and perfection of intuition under divine inspiration gives the perfect inner vision and direct insight into the character, properties, and purpose of all things to which the attention and interest are directed. It is, we repeat, a spiritual sense opening inwardly, as the physical senses open outwardly; and because it has the capacity to perceive, grasp, and know the truth at first hand, independent of all external sources of information, we call it intuition.

4. St Augustine says: the best thing that man can say about God is to be able to be silent about Him, from the wisdom of his inner judgement. Therefore be silent and prate not about God, for whenever thou dost prate about God, thou liest, and committest sin. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding.

5. The masters say: That is young, which is near its beginning.

6. The man who has submitted his will and purposes entirely to God, carries God with him in all his works and in all circumstances. Therein can no man hinder him, for he neither aims at nor enjoys anything else, save God. God is united with Him in all his purposes and designs. Even as no manifoldness can dissipate God, so nothing can dissipate such a man, or destroy his unity.

7. But if the man were wise and diligent, the opposition of the devil and his exercises would be much more profitable to him than the aid of the good angel; for if there were no struggle, there could be no victory.

8. Knock also at the door through which we must go–namely, Christ Jesus.
At this door, the praying man must knock for three ends, if he wishes to be really admitted.
First he must knock devoutly, at the broken heart and the open side, and enter in with all devotion, and in recognition of his unfathomable poverty and nothingness, as poor Lazarus did at the rich man’s gate, and ask for crumbs of His grace.
Then again, he should knock at the door of the holy open wounds of His holy hands, and pray for true Divine knowledge, that it may enlighten him and exalt him.
Finally, knock at the door of His holy feet, and pray for true Divine love, which may unite thee with Him, and immerse and cover thee in Him.

9. Hence a certain doctor says: God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere, and His circumference nowhere.

10. The more simple any being is in itself, the more manifold is it in its energy and operation.

11. Reason mounts up in its own light and by its own power, till at last it comes to think itself the true eternal light, and gives itself out to be such; and it is thus deceived in itself, and deceives others at the same time, people who know no better and are prone to be so deceived.

12. The most noble and gracious gift that is bestowed on any creature is the Reason and the Will. These two are so intimately connected that the one cannot be anywhere without the other. If it were not for these two gifts, there would be no reasonable creatures, but only brutes and brutality; and this would be a great loss, for God would then never receive His due, or behold Himself and His attributes exhibited in action; a thing which ought to be, and is, necessary to perfection.
For it pertains to the will, to will something. For what else does it exist? It would be a vain thing if it had no work to do, and this it cannot have without the creature. And so there must needs be creatures, and God will have them, in order that by their means the will may be exercised, and may work, though in God it must be without work. Therefore the will in the creature, which we call the created will, is as truly God’s as the eternal will, and is not from the creature.

The following are statements attributed to Leonardo in his written works [1]. Each paragraph is a different statement from a potentially different original source.

1. But since we know that painting embraces and contains within itself all things produced by nature or whatever results from man’s passing actions – and ultimately everything that can be taken in by the eyes (…) he seems to me to be a pitiful master who can only do one thing well.

2. The good painter has to paint two principal things, that is to say, man and the intention of his mind. The first is easy and the second difficult, because the latter has to be represented through gestures and movements of the limbs.

3. I shall not refrain from including among these precepts a new aid to contemplation, which, although seemingly trivial and almost ridiculous, is none the less of great utility in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, if you look at any walls soiled with a variety of stains, or stones with variegated patterns (…), you will therein be able to see a resemblance to various landscapes graced with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys and hills in many combinations. Or again you will be able to see various battles and figures darting about, strange-looking faces and costumes, and an endless number of things that you can distil into finely rendered forms. And what happens with regard to such walls and variegated stones is just as with the sound of bells, in whose peal you will find any name or word you care to imagine.

4. I say that when you are painting you ought to have by you a flat mirror in which you should often look at your work. The work will appear to you in reverse and will seem to be by the hand of another master and thereby you will better judge its faults.

5. How to learn well by heart: When you wish to be able to make use of something committed to memory adopt this method, which is that when you have drawn the same thing so many times that it seems you have it by heart try to do it without the exemplar. Have your exemplar traced on to a thin flat plane of glass. Place this on top of the drawing you have done without the exemplar, and note carefully where the tracing does not match up with your drawing, and in those places where you have made a mistake, resolve not to repeat the error. In fact, go back to the exemplar and draw over and over it the erroneous part till you have it firmly in your memory.

6. I say that in narrative paintings you should closely intermingle direct opposites, because they offer a great contrast to each other, and the more so the more they are adjacent. Thus, have the ugly one next to the beautiful, the large next to the small, the old next to the young, the strong next to the weak. In this way there is as much variety, as closely juxtaposed as possible.

7. It previously happened to me that I made a picture representing a holy subject, which was bought by someone who loved it and who wished to remove the attributes of its divinity in order that he might kiss it without guilt. But finally his conscience overcame his sighs and lust, and he was forced to banish it from his house.

8. And if you should have a love for such things you might be prevented by loathing, and if that did not prevent you, you might be deterred by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of those corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to see. And if this did not prevent you, perhaps you might not be able to draw so well.

Do you know what you will achieve if you practice drawing with a pen? It will enable you, trained and skilful, to draw a great deal in your head.
Exert yourself and take delight in copying always the best things – crafted by the hand of great masters – that you can find.

Cenninno Cenninni, Libro d’Arte, 1400

In the doctor’s schools of anatomy he dissected the corpses of criminals, undismayed by the brutal and repulsive nature of this study and only eager to learn how to portray in his painting the various limbs and muscles, their bending and stretching, in accordance with the laws of nature.

Paolo Giovio, 1525

I would not like to neglect to repeat the words I heard King François I say about him: (…) he did not believe there could be anyone else on earth who knew as much as Leonardo, not just about sculpture, painting and architecture, but also insofar as he was a great philosopher.

Benvenuto Cellini, 1562

Altogether, his genius was so wonderfully inspired by the grace of God, his powers of expression were so powerfully fed by a willing memory and intellect, and his writing conveyed his ideas so precisely, that his arguments and reasonings confounded the most formidable critics.

Giorgio Vasari, 1568

During his apprenticeship, Leonardo sometimes made clay models, draping the figures with rags dipped in plaster, and then drawing them painstakingly on fine Rheims cloth or prepared linen. These drawings were done in black and white with the point of the brush, and the results were marvellous, as one can see from the examples I have in my book of drawings.

Giorgio Vasari, 1568

But before we go any further, we must say a little more about Leonardo’s personality and talents. The many gifts that Nature bestowed upon him concentrated themselves primarily in his eye. Hence, although capable of all things, he appeared great above all as a painter. He did not rely simply upon the inner impulses of his innate, inestimable talent; he permitted no arbitrary, random stroke of the brush; everything had to be deliberate and considered. From the pure proportions to which he devoted so much research, to the strangest monsters that he compiled out of contradictory figures, everything had to be both natural and rational.

Goethe, 1787

It requires a quite different strenght and agility to maintain one’s position within a system that is never fixed and where ideas are free and still evolving, than in a dogmatic world. Leonardo da Vinci stands higher than Michaelangelo, Michaelangelo higher than Rafael.

Nietzsche, 1885

Painting, for Leonardo, is an operation which calls for every sphere of knowledge and almost every technique. Geometry, dynamics, geology, physiology. Representing a battle requires a study of whirlpools and swirls of dust; he will only portray them having observed them with his own eyes, so that his attempt will be well researched and informed by an understanding of their laws.

Paul Valéry, 1895

Art and scientific genius came together in Leonardo’s spirit.

Thomas Mann, 1936

Tolerance, it is true, demands that we respect differences of belief. But as already recognized by Leonardo da Vinci, to the degree that the truth becomes better known, so general consensus will come to replace individual opinions.

Thomas Mann, 1945

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[1] Source: Leonardo da Vinci, The Complete Drawings by Johannes Nathan and Frank Zöllner, Taschen, Bibliotheca Universalis, 2023