Scrum Anti-Patterns -- An Empirical Study

Wide-spread adoption of the agile movement has rapidly changed the landscape of software industry. In particular, Scrum is an agile process framework that has become extremely popular in industry. However, the practical implementation of Scrum in companies rarely follows the text book ideals. Typically, companies deviate from the proposed Scrum practices for different reasons. While some deviations may be well motivated and reasonable, companies are often tempted to adjust Scrum for the company without clearly understanding the consequences of the deviations. In this paper our aim is to identify ways of potentially harmful mishandling of Scrum in industry based on empirical data collected in a survey. The identified (mal)practices are presented in a semi-formal manner as anti-patterns. The study resulted in 10 anti-patterns that express the context of the deviation, the deviation itself, the broken core principles of Scrum, and the possible consequences of the deviation.