Gummy Bears and Unicorns Don't Transform Organizations

📚 Source

https://mdalmijn.com/p/gummy-bears-and-unicorns-dont-transform

Who Should Read This

Anyone who:

• Thinks “installing Scrum” will magically fix their broken organization.
• Hoping meetings and new titles will substitute for real change.
• Tempted to sell frameworks instead of courage.
• Wondering why all the ceremonies landed, but none of the outcomes did.

Influenced Mental Models

• Cargo Cult Adoption
• Maslow’s Hammer
• Shifting the Burden
• Tool Blaming
• Framework Scapegoating
• Definition of Ready
• Sprint Zero
• Testing Sprints
• Sprint Demo
• Lifecycle Smuggling
• Mechanical Scrum

Resonating Quotes

Quote

“If Scrum is a trojan horse, it’s best compared to an unicorn with a belly filled with gummy bears. The gummy bears taste great but chewing on gummy bears doesn’t fundamentally change the organization. After a while, employees just look at the unicorn and think: “What the hell should we do with this strange, mythical creature?""

— Maarten Dalmijn via Gummy Bears and Unicorns Don’t Transform Organizations

I love analogies, and although this one was a bit hard for me to follow, I also love unicorns.