zombie scrum Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Danil Chernyshev: Why Teams Always Adapt—And How Bad Rules Push Them Into Zombie Scrum

“Teams always adapt. You only get to decide what they adapt to.” – Danil Chernyshev

Most dysfunction doesn’t start with the team—it starts with the structure around them. Danil shares the story of a classic metrics-driven organization where Scrum Masters reported to a dedicated manager who measured their success by team velocity.

That manager tracked retrospectives in a separate log, and would show up at the daily Scrum to confirm everyone answered the three questions. The result was predictable: the retrospective became a clock to survive, the daily became a checkbox with no real conversation, and velocity turned into theater—stories closed as “done,” then reopened as “part two” in the next sprint. There was never a real done increment.

Danil refuses to blame the team. They were doing exactly what teams always do—adapting to survive the rules and boundaries handed to them. As he and Vasco explore, the only real choice a leader has is not whether a team adapts, but what they adapt to. Dictate bureaucracy, and they’ll adapt to surviving it. That’s how productive, enjoyable work quietly turns into zombie Scrum. Servant leadership exists precisely so someone helps the team adapt toward value—not toward compliance.

Self-reflection Question: Look at a behavior on your team you find frustrating—what rule or structure might that team be adapting to in order to survive?

Featured Book of the Week: Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability by Daniel Vacanti

Danil calls this book eye-opening. It changed how he thinks about metrics—not as a reporting tool for executives, but as something teams can use for themselves to understand what to do next and how to improve.

As he puts it, “after that book, you will probably know that a lot of cumulative flow diagrams that you saw in your past, they doesn’t work well, and need to be rebuilt.” The book makes flow metrics serve the team first, while still giving leadership the transparency they need. You can also hear Daniel Vacanti on the podcast, and get the book here: Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability by Daniel Vacanti.

In this segment, we talk about User Story Mapping by Jeff Patton, and you can hear Jeff Patton on the podcast.

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About Danil Chernyshev

Danil is a results-driven Scrum Master and Delivery Manager passionate about optimizing SDLC processes and unlocking development teams’ potential. With a keen interest in AI, he empowers organizations to innovate and excel, bridging agile practices with cutting-edge technology for impactful results.

You can link with Danil Chernyshev on LinkedIn.

Maria Skvortsova: The Team That Gave Up — When Green Reports Mask a Sinking Ship

“They said, ‘Yeah, we know, but no one will listen to us.’ And they just gave up — waiting for the ship to sink so they could swim away.” — Maria Skvortsova

Maria walked into a 20-person migration team where the PowerPoint reports glowed green but the reality on the ground was covered in red flags. Developers were building features against requirements that had already changed — nobody had told them.

The scope was impossibly large, and when Maria asked the team why they hadn’t raised a red flag, the answer shook her: “No one will listen to us.” The team had given up. They were waiting for the project to fail so they could leave. Maria’s first instinct was to observe — spend weeks understanding the dynamics, the communication patterns, the culture.

But she learned the hard way that when a team is already drowning, there’s no time for a slow ramp-up. She needed to act immediately. Her breakthrough came from a simple technique: replacing some daily standups with an async RAG (Red-Amber-Green) status system in Jira.

Team members just chose a color for each story — no explanation needed. It gave them psychological safety to signal problems without speaking up in a 20-person meeting. From there, Maria broke the team into smaller cross-functional groups — one QA, one developer, one consultant — so they could actually discuss features instead of hiding behind silence.

Self-reflection Question: When you join a new team and sense that something is deeply wrong, how long do you wait before acting — and is that waiting period serving the team or just your own comfort?

Featured Book of the Week: Zombie Scrum Survival Guide by Christiaan Verwijs, Johannes Schartau, and Barry Overeem

Maria chose Zombie Scrum Survival Guide because, as she puts it, “Most Scrum Masters learn by the happy path. We all know how it should be. But we rarely think about how it should not be.” The book focuses on detecting anti-patterns early — before they become entrenched behaviors that are much harder to break.

Maria finds it especially valuable because it provides concrete experiments you can try with your team to shake off the zombie symptoms. Her advice: start here, because understanding what bad looks like is just as important as knowing the ideal.

In this segment, we refer to Zombie Scrum Survival Guide by Christiaan Verwijs, Johannes Schartau, and Barry Overeem. Also check out the episode with Barry and Christiaan, authors of the book, on the podcast.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Maria Skvortsova

Maria is a Delivery Manager and Agile Coach who thrives in complexity, bringing clarity to chaotic environments. With a decade in C++ development and a background in professional opera, she blends technical precision with human empathy, helping enterprise teams move beyond task execution to collaborate seamlessly and perform like a synchronized, high-impact orchestra.

You can link with Maria Skvortsova on LinkedIn.

Junaid Shaikh: Why Teams Go Through The Motions of Agile Without Being Agile, And What To Do About It

On the topic of teams that self-destruct, Junaid paints a picture that many listeners will recognize. He picked up a team’s retrospective history and cumulative flow diagrams and found problems at every level: managers who declared “from tomorrow we’re going agile” without understanding what that meant, then started comparing velocity across teams. Product owners who took PO training but reverted to command-and-control project management. A previous Scrum Master doing what Junaid calls “zombie Scrum” — implementing the framework mechanically without understanding its purpose.

The pattern underneath it all: people enveloping their traditional mindset under an agile umbrella. The ceremonies happen, the daily standups run, but nobody is questioning why they’re doing any of it. As Vasco observes, this zombie pattern isn’t limited to Scrum — it happens with code reviews, architecture reviews, any process that gets adopted without critical thinking about its purpose.

Junaid’s insight: if you don’t understand the basics with the right mindset, every event feels like overhead. Teams complain about “too many meetings” because they’re running agile ceremonies on top of their old informal processes. “If you don’t get out of your previous shell, you cannot get into a new shell.”

Featured Book of the Week: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer.

Junaid’s book recommendation is The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. As a Scrum Master working at companies like Ericsson and ABB — organizations that are a “United Nations” of cultures — understanding cultural tendencies has been essential. But Junaid goes further: you can customize the Culture Map framework even within a team of people from the same country, using the parameters to map different personalities. It’s about how you use the tool, not just where people come from.

He also recommends Scrum Mastery: From Good to Great Servant Leadership by Geoff Watts for practical advice on the servant leadership role, and regularly visits Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org for real-world insights from the community.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Junaid Shaikh

Junaid Shaikh is an energetic Agile Coach with a natural flair for Agile and Scrum, shaped by recent experiences at software giants like Ericsson and hardware leaders ABB. In his work, he champions collaboration, curiosity, and continuous improvement. Beyond coaching, he brings the same passion to cricket, table tennis, carrom, and his newest sporting obsession — padel.

You can link with Junaid Shaikh on LinkedIn.

Stuart Tipples: From Zombie Scrum to Agile Thinking—Learning from a Failed Transformation

Stuart shares a powerful story about joining a team that appeared to be thriving with Scrum ceremonies in place, only to discover they were performing “zombie scrum” – going through the motions without embracing agile thinking. The team functioned as a feature factory, never questioning requirements or truly collaborating. Stuart learned that agile isn’t about what you do, but how you and the team think. He emphasizes that frameworks are just guardrails; the real focus must be on coaching people in agile values and principles. His key insight: know the rules before you break them, and remember that no amount of ceremony can rescue a team that lacks the agile mindset.

Self-reflection Question: Are your team’s agile ceremonies creating real value and fostering collaboration, or are you simply going through the motions of “performative theatre”?

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About Stuart Tipples

Stuart is an Agilista, a coach, Scrum Master, agile delivery. A husband, Dog Dad, and as Star Wars nerd. Positive disruptor. Passionate about helping teams and individuals build and ship awesome products to their customers. Stuart also blogs at www.yourebelscrum.com

You can link with Stuart Tipples on LinkedIn.