8 Causes of Scrum Failure Scrum Masters Should Watch Out For

8 Causes of Scrum Failure Scrum Masters Should Watch Out For

Published on April 19, 2025

Scrum is a framework that, when adopted in its true spirit, can significantly contribute to the success of a project. However, it's not a silver bullet—if not implemented properly, it will fall short. For Scrum to be successful, things don’t need to be perfect from day one. It is the responsibility of the Scrum Master, as an Agile coach, to help the team identify shortcomings and empower them to improve.

Below are eight common causes of Scrum failure that Scrum Masters should watch out for. Addressing these effectively can help transform a low-performing team into a high-performing one that delivers real value to customers.

1. Lack of a Self-Organized Team

The success of a Scrum team heavily depends on how self-organized the development team is. Often, team members coming from traditional methodologies are used to following instructions and may not be naturally self-organized. They tend to rely on the Scrum Master, Product Owner, or internal leaders to make decisions.

Key traits of a self-organized team include:

2. Team Members Not Practicing Scrum Values

Scrum is built on three pillars (transparency, inspection, and adaptation) and five values—courage, commitment, openness, focus, and respect. Without these, a team may appear to function well on paper, but lack the soul of a high-performing Scrum team.

The Scrum Master must help the team understand and embody these values by mentoring and correcting behavior when values are breached:

3. Diluting Scrum by Adding Non-Agile Activities

Teams with a background in traditional methods often try to blend non-Agile practices into Scrum. This could involve unnecessary documentation, meetings, or processes. While the intent may be to bring in the "best of both worlds," the result is often the opposite. The Scrum Master must educate the team on why sticking to the Scrum framework is essential and intervene when non-Agile practices are introduced.

4. Product Owner Not Dedicated Enough

The Product Owner role is a full-time job that requires balancing stakeholder interaction with collaboration with the development team. Often, senior leaders are assigned this role without freeing up their time. This leads to issues such as poorly refined backlogs and unavailable support for the team.

Warning signs include:

5. Product Owner Not Aligned with End Users

The Product Owner should spend time understanding user needs and priorities. A lack of this connection can lead to poor backlog prioritization, which results in teams delivering low-value features.

Look out for:

6. Weak Product Backlog

A healthy backlog should contain well-refined, estimated, and prioritized items for at least two future sprints. Without this, the team faces confusion and under-utilization during sprint planning.

Problems caused by an unhealthy backlog:

7. Inappropriate Project Type for Scrum

Scrum is not suitable for all projects. It may not be a good fit in cases such as:

Scrum Masters should voice concerns if Scrum is applied to unsuitable projects, even if the decision is already made.

8. Not Following Agile Development Practices

Delivering a potentially releasable increment at the end of each sprint requires solid engineering practices. Without them, long-term success is jeopardized.

Recommended practices:

Closing Note

As the Scrum Guide says, Scrum is simple to understand but difficult to master. A team may follow all Scrum rituals and still fail to achieve meaningful outcomes. A smart Scrum Master identifies what's holding the team back and takes proactive steps to build a high-performing, value-driven Scrum team.