10 Signs You're Using Scrum Badly

Sometimes Scrum gets a bad rap. When I ask why an organization struggled with Scrum, I almost always hear something like “there was too much overhead.” But when I dig deeper, I usually find that the organization had imposed extra rules—rules that have nothing to do with Scrum. In other words, when Scrum “doesn’t work,” it’s almost always because the team wasn’t actually using Scrum well.

In today’s fast-moving world, Scrum is more relevant than ever. Sure, it’s no longer shiny and new, but it’s still the best tool we have for enabling teams to solve complex problems. Scrum provides just enough structure for teams to collaborate effectively—without bogging them down in bureaucracy.

So if your team is struggling, pause and ask yourself: Are we really using Scrum the way it was designed? Here are 10 signs you might be holding your Scrum team back - and what you can do about it.

1. Too Many Approval Gates

If every piece of work needs a parade of signatures before it moves forward, you’re not creating accountability or transparency - you’re creating waste and frustration. A Scrum board with 20 columns isn’t “disciplined,” it’s a bottleneck factory.

Scrum thrives when the team has just enough process to expose the work, not bury it under layers of approval.

What to do instead: Measure the Scrum team's effectiveness by measuring customer outcomes.

2. Documentation Requirements Are Too Rigorous

If every backlog item requires a novella’s worth of acceptance criteria, ROI calculations, and footnotes, congratulations—you’re writing literature, not building products.

Scrum doesn’t say “don’t document.” It says document just enough. Teams in regulated industries may need more, sure. But when documentation becomes a bigger deliverable than the product itself, you’ve lost the plot.

Yes, documentation is important. But requiring ten acceptance criteria for every backlog item? Or calculating ROI for every story? That’s overkill. The Scrum team decides how much documentation is enough to deliver value. Anything beyond that is just busywork.

What to do instead: Use the Definition of Done to reduce documentation requirements where possible. For example, if every product backlog item requires a certain amount of testing, put it in the Definition of Done.

3. Silos, Silos Everywhere

A cross-functional team should be able to deliver something valuable on its own. If your team needs to wait on three other teams before anything ships, you’re not doing Scrum—you’re doing dependency management with extra steps.

It’s like asking one team to deliver only the top-right corner of a birthday present box, while another builds the bottom-left. By the time the customer sees it, the “gift” looks like Frankenstein’s wrapping job.

What to do instead: Take a step back and define products for the organization. Contact Rebel Scrum to learn more.

4. Low Trust

When trust evaporates, Scrum collapses. I once worked with a team where stakeholders didn’t trust the Product Owner, so they shoved requests straight onto Developers. Developers didn’t trust the PO either, so they ignored the backlog. The Sprint Review turned into a magic trick: Surprise! 70% of the Sprint was invisible work!

If people are bypassing roles, it’s not a shortcut—it’s a symptom of broken trust.

5. The Scrum Team Is Disempowered

If every decision has to be rubber-stamped by someone outside the team, your “Scrum team” is really just an execution arm for somebody else’s brain. That’s not Scrum—that’s command and control with daily standups.

6. Low Morale

Scrum teams want to do great work. When morale tanks, it’s usually because they can’t. Maybe the backlog is a mess, maybe they’re blocked by silos, maybe they don't have the resources that they need, or maybe their every move is second-guessed.

Low morale isn’t laziness—it’s a canary in the coal mine. Ignore it, and don’t be surprised when turnover starts.

7. No Product Goal

Without a Product Goal, your team is just flailing. Work becomes a random collection of busywork instead of a meaningful push toward value. It’s like rowing hard without a destination—you’re sweating, but you’re not actually going anywhere.

8. Micromanagement

If you feel the need to track every move your team makes, ask yourself why. Micromanagement signals a lack of trust. Instead of hovering, lean into Scrum’s built-in transparency: Sprint Reviews, Daily Scrums, and Retrospectives. They exist so you don’t need to micromanage. (Check out our recent article, 10 Signs You Might be Micromanaging your Scrum team.)

9. Not Delivering Incrementally

Scrum is built on incremental delivery. If you’re holding work back until “it’s all done,” you’re missing the point. Delivering in small increments reduces risk, provides fast feedback, and keeps stakeholders engaged. If you’re not delivering incrementally, you’re not really doing Scrum. (Check out 4 Red Flags Your Agile Team May Not Fully Embrace Incremental Delivery.)

10. Skipping the Retrospective

Ironically, low performing teams tend to skip the Retrospective more often than high performing teams. (Seems like there might be a causal relationship there, actually.)

Skipping Retrospectives is like skipping oil changes on your car—it might seem fine at first, but pretty soon, things will break down. Retrospectives are how Scrum teams inspect and adapt. Without them, the team stagnates. If you are skipping the Retrospective frequently it may be a sign of a deeper problem. Is it because the Scrum team is not empowered? Do they not have a clear goal that they can iterate towards?

What to do instead: Don't skip the Retrospective, design a targeted Retrospective to address your problems head-on. And make sure that Every Retrospective results in a least one action item - no matter how small - to improve the adoption of Scrum. (Are you struggling with engagement at the Retrospective? Try taking turns leading the Retrospective to get more engagement and ownership from the team.)

Conclusion

Scrum is simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The framework was never meant to add layers of overhead—it’s meant to strip them away. If you recognize these signs in your team, don’t blame Scrum. Instead, ask whether you’ve accidentally layered in bureaucracy, silos, or mistrust.

The good news? These problems are solvable. With trust, empowerment, and a relentless focus on delivering value, Scrum can be exactly what your team needs: the lightest framework that helps you navigate a complex, fast-moving world.

Rebel Scrum is the host of the annual Scrum Day Madison Agile Conference.