I also believe that Agile requires a shift in team beliefs, values and behavior.
I am in a situation with a government agency; they have used Scrum successfully for another large effort and are now attempting to start up a new large effort.
We have many challenges; the top 2, imho, are:
1. The product owner is absolutely unwilling to commit. The "assigned" scrum master (assigned, but not really a pig; more of a chicken) enables this by allowing the product owner to put user stories like "As a product owner, I need to have the best web site for my users." into our sprint backlog. This scrum master is a CSM; and the product owner has been to training. I am not sure how to try to help him get beyond this behavior - and really not sure he's amenable to it! Any suggestions?
2. The team members are, obviously, frustrated by this - it leaves them feeling like they are just taking blind stabs at trying to meet sprint objectives. The mantra is turning into: "I don't have any development tasks to work on". As the unofficial scrum master (not recognized, but doing that role), how do I get the team members to go beyond the roles that they feel they were hired for and work as scrum team members? How do I help them see that we all have to work on every/ any task on the backlog - whether it involves writing code or not? (maybe I just answered that question on my own... )
Any specific thoughts/ advice on working in a scrum-like setting for a government agency? Sometimes it seems like we're trying to scrum - but certainly not in an agile way!
Thanks!
Clyde
