I recently watched an X-Men movie and it occurred to me that one of the great things about iterative development is the opportunity we have to evolve quickly. We mutate our approach, activities and processes at every generation (sprint). Like evolution, we implement natural selection. We try a new process or activity and if it helps the team, it survives; we keep it and we may build on it in the future generations. If something doesn’t work, if it doesn’t help us, it dies off and the “mutation” is not inherited by the next sprint. Having said that, it can be difficult to have the courage to make some changes. Some teams using Scrum may be reluctant to “mutate” anything that would contradict a purist adoption of the methodology. It’s easy to fear change and there’s a good argument that sticking to the script and using best practice helps us avoid mistakes. However, we should remember that Scrum is about adapting as well as inspecting. Continue…