Are there many companies using strictly agile / scrum in the UK? I know a lot of companies say they are working in this way, but on talking to employees they are often doing a hybrid version or only certain projects are using agile. What are other people's experiences?
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I work for an agile consultancy in Brazil. We have 6 Scrum.org official trainers in the staff and as partners of the company. Each of them is highly qualified and have worked with agile in other places for a long time. I too have some experience on the market with this kind of methodology.
One thing I can certainly say is: it all depends on the client. Clients have their company cultures and that's is something that you cannot take for granted. Most often than not, this culture is not aligned with the "agile way" of doing things. So, as Scrum preaches, we have to adapt. That's why you see some hybrid versions around. It's not easy to overcome those things. It takes time and patience and, sometimes, we "fail" and the client's culture "wins". I takes a deep change on the company mindset as a whole to embrace things that are not the usual "we always did it this way and it works". IMHO, its not always achievable.
Having said that, we do have clients (most of them), even non-IT ones (where IT is not their core business) that we are successful on applying agile methodology. Those are the best places to work. It's pretty amazing what an open mindset can do for a company.
Thank you for your reply! I am about to do my psm-1 so I have been thinking quite black and white with what is and is not scrum, but I can see hybrid versions as a good stepping stone. Do you have an opinion on "the right way" to do hybrid / scrumfall?
It's hard to say. The Scrum Guide (as you are studying to PSM-I) states that Scrum is not Scrum if you're not doing all its parts.
I like to think about agile methodologies as a whole, not only Scrum. A kanban board is nice to give transparency to things but, it's not a Scrum thing. XP has a lot of things in common with it and I think it's a nice approach to agile development but also, not Scrum.
As @miketalbot said, JIRA and Slack are tools that has no Scrum concepts but are widely used in agile teams.
Good luck on your exam. If you need any tips, feel free to ask (I'm PSM-I certified).
I think you also need to consider that there is a movement going "beyond scrum" as a better way of being agile now we have all of the tools to communicate and plan better. The scrum itself makes less sense in a world where we are all interconnected by JIRA and Slack.
Do you have a link where I can find out more about that?