Scrum founder’s belief in pseudoscience and why it matters to Agile

Renee Troughton has written an excellent piece demonstrating that for almost 10 years, Scrum founder Jeff Sutherland has been selling consultations relating to widely debunked pseudomedicine theories.

http://agileforest.com/2012/01/23/frequency-foundation-and-agile/

Reading the primary documents (the Photo Analysis.pdf) is enlightening.  It is such junk science any high school science maven could debunk most of it in a few minutes.

But what does it have to do with Agile?

Well, here is what I see the similarities being:

1) Scrum is just the idea of Sutherland and to some degree Schwaber. Similar to the Rife Frequencies just being an idea — there is no proof that either works, yet Sutherland sells both

2) Most of the “evidence” — such as there is — that scrum works at all is due to Sutherlands work at a number of companies and it’s widely quoted. But we can see from his “work” at Frequency Foundation that his claims must be taken with a very large dose of skepticism

3) The Rife folks appear to be preying on desperate people hoping for a silver bullet to cure their ills. And Scrum (IMHO) is preying on desperate managers hoping for a silver bullet

4) The Rife stuff -is  pseudomedicine and the Scrum stuff is simplistic pseudomanagement.

I used to think there was a certain tin foil hat element to the Scrumentology business but we can see that at least one high level Scrum lord is way beyond tin foil hats and e-meters.

The FrequencyFoundation site actually talks about chem trails and healing pets from dirty electricity!

Reading through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience I can see parallels to both FF and Scrum (there is a Scrumfoundation as well  – coincidence?).

Use of vague, exaggerated or untestable claims

• Assertion of scientific claims that are vague rather than precise, and that lack specific measurements.^[42]
• Failure to make use of operational definitions (i.e. publicly accessible definitions of the variables, terms, or objects of interest so that persons other than the definer can independently measure or test them).^[43] (See also: Reproducibility)
• Failure to make reasonable use of the principle of parsimony, i.e. failing to seek an explanation that requires the fewest possible additional assumptions when multiple viable explanations are possible (see: Occam’s razor)^[44]
• Use of obscurantist language, and use of apparently technical jargon in an effort to give claims the superficial trappings of science.
• …etc

Personalization of issues

• Tight social groups and authoritarian personality, suppression of dissent, and groupthink can enhance the adoption of beliefs that have no rational basis. In attempting to confirm their beliefs, the group tends to identify their critics as enemies.^[61]
• Assertion of claims of a conspiracy on the part of the scientific community to suppress the results.^[62]
• Attacking the motives or character of anyone who questions the claims (see Ad hominem fallacy).^[63]

Use of misleading language

• Creating scientific-sounding terms in order to add weight to claims and persuade non-experts to believe statements that may be false or meaningless. For example, a long-standing hoax refers to water by the rarely used formal name “dihydrogen monoxide” (DHMO) and describes it as the main constituent in most poisonous solutions to show how easily the general public can be misled.
• Using established terms in idiosyncratic ways, thereby demonstrating unfamiliarity with mainstream work in the discipline

The Scrum community has worked hard to erode their credibility for a long time, from bogus certifications, to lack of supporting evidence, to infighting between various camps, to outright censorship of dissenters.

What little credibility they had left, is now gone.

Jordan

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