Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Jeff Sutherland

Unsurprisingly, this is not a new problem. People have struggled for decades with exactly this. One issue is that different members of the team know different things, but another is sometimes called the “bandwagon” effect. You’ve been in meetings like that. That’s when someone comes up with an idea, and everyone starts talking about it. And even if you disagreed with it initially, you go along because the group is going along. And everyone agrees on a path forward that seems like a really good idea at the time but turns out to be a complete failure. And when you probe people about the decision, it’s almost always the case that each had some reservations, but they didn’t voice them because they figured everyone else was excited. People assume that if everyone else is going along with something, their own reservation is silly or misinformed, and they don’t want to look stupid in front of the group. Remember, this groupthink isn’t an individual failure; this is a human failure.