The Hidden Cost of Skipping Scrum Ceremonies | Anh Vu

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode: The Hidden Cost of Skipping Scrum Ceremonies | Anh Vu
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Anh Vu, Seasoned Project Manager and Scrum Master
Release Date: July 21, 2025

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Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages in a compelling conversation with Anh Vu, a seasoned project manager with over a decade of experience in software delivery, Agile methodologies, DevOps, and project management. Anh Vu brings a wealth of knowledge as a PMP trainer who has empowered more than 200 professionals. His passion for continuous learning and practical tools makes this episode a valuable resource for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches aiming to refine their craft.

Anh Vu’s Journey to Becoming a Scrum Master

Anh Vu shares his transition from a traditional Project Manager to a Scrum Master, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned along the way.

[01:59] Anh Vu: "I started my Scrum Master journey around eight years ago when I was at my previous company, a payment provider in the US... I jumped into the Scrum Master role to learn about the framework and help our team deliver with Scrum."

Anh emphasizes the widespread adoption of Scrum in the IT industry, noting that approximately 70-80% of IT professionals are familiar with or utilize Scrum in their daily work. This prevalent use underscores the importance of understanding and effectively implementing Scrum practices.

The Challenge of Implementing Scrum

Anh Vu recounts his initial experience with Scrum, where enthusiasm for the framework's mechanics overshadowed its underlying principles.

[04:07] Anh Vu: "We can easily mimic the mechanics of the framework, but when we applied all these Scrum roles and ceremonies in my team, the daily meetings quickly turned into debates... the team felt we spent too much time in meetings and not enough time doing the work."

This misapplication led to the team abandoning daily stand-ups in favor of asynchronous updates, which subsequently created communication gaps and unresolved blockers. The project ultimately faltered due to these oversights.

Understanding the Core Principles

The conversation delves into the critical distinction between following Scrum mechanics and embracing its foundational values and principles. Anh Vu stresses the importance of connecting Scrum ceremonies to their intended purpose.

[08:06] Anh Vu: "We need to understand why we do that and share the reason with the team so people understand it is necessary for the success of the whole team."

Anh advocates for a value-driven approach where practices are implemented not just for the sake of adherence but to foster transparency, inspection, and adaptation—the three pillars of Scrum.

Overcoming Anti-Patterns

Host Vasco Duarte introduces the concept of Scrum anti-patterns, such as resistance to ceremonies like daily stand-ups and retrospectives. Anh Vu provides strategies to counter these tendencies by reinforcing the "why" behind each practice.

[10:16] Anh Vu: "Whenever we try to adopt something, we need to connect the physics of the work with the why, the reason behind that."

He suggests creating an environment where teams feel empowered to experiment and find alternative ways to achieve core Scrum values, ensuring that any deviations still uphold the framework's integrity.

The Shu Ha Ri Model in Scrum Adoption

Anh Vu introduces the Shu Ha Ri model, a Japanese martial arts concept that outlines the stages of learning and mastering a practice. This model serves as a mental framework for Scrum Masters to guide teams through initial adherence to Scrum rules, to experimentation, and eventually to mastery.

[10:50] Anh Vu: "We need to do it properly first, follow the guide, and make it work before we try to tweak anything and become more creative with that."

By mastering the basics before making adjustments, Scrum Masters can ensure that foundational practices are solid, enabling more effective and meaningful customizations later on.

Key Takeaways

1. Prioritize Principles Over Mechanics: It's essential to understand and communicate the underlying reasons for Scrum ceremonies and roles to ensure they add value rather than becoming rote activities.

2. Foster Transparency, Inspection, and Adaptation: These core pillars should guide the implementation of any Scrum practice, ensuring that the team remains aligned with Agile values.

3. Utilize the Shu Ha Ri Model: This framework helps Scrum Masters and teams progress from mastering basic Scrum practices to innovating and refining their Agile processes.

4. Encourage Experimentation with Purpose: Empower teams to explore alternative methods to achieve Scrum's goals, provided they maintain the integrity of its core principles.

Conclusion

Anh Vu's experiences underscore the hidden costs associated with superficially implementing Scrum ceremonies without embracing their intended purpose. By focusing on the "why" and fostering a culture of continuous improvement and understanding, Scrum Masters can lead their teams to more effective and fulfilling Agile practices.

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Notable Quotes:

• Anh Vu [04:07]: "We can easily mimic the mechanics of the framework, but when we applied all these Scrum roles and ceremonies in my team, the daily meetings quickly turned into debates."

• Anh Vu [08:06]: "We need to understand why we do that and share the reason with the team so people understand it is necessary for the success of the whole team."

• Anh Vu [10:16]: "Whenever we try to adopt something, we need to connect the physics of the work with the why, the reason behind that."

• Anh Vu [10:50]: "We need to do it properly first, follow the guide, and make it work before we try to tweak anything and become more creative with that."

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This episode serves as a profound reminder that effective Agile practice goes beyond the surface-level implementation of ceremonies and roles. It calls for a deeper understanding of the principles that drive Scrum, ensuring that teams not only follow the process but also embody the values that make Agile methodologies successful.

Transcript

[Vasko]

Hey there, Agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame war free and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's this Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the Agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership, that's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast.

[Rascal]

Hello everybody. Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And this week joining us from the beautiful country of Vietnam is Aang Vu. Hey Aang. Welcome to the show.

[Aang Vu]

Yep. Hi Vasco.

[Rascal]

So Aang is a seasoned project manager with more than 10 years in software delivery, agile, DevOps and project management. He is also a PMP trainer who has empowered more than 200 professionals. He's passionate about continuous learning and is always looking for practical tools and methodologies to help PMs and teams succeed in a fast paced, tech driven environment. So that was a short intro. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah. Hi Rascal, it's my pleasure to be here today. Actually I started my Scrum Master journey around eight years ago when I was at my previous company, a payment provider in the US and I was a PM at that time. But at that point Scrum is kind of gaining traction in the IT industries and in my company as well. So our team also kind of first time exposing to the framework, learning to adopt Scrum in our way of collaboration and managing the work and deliver the project. And as a PM I also jump into the Scrum Master role to learning about the framework, learning about the way of working and trying to help our team our delivery with like Scrum. And this is the first time I know about Scrum and try to practicing it in real project and after that in many of my recent project Scrum is also very popular I think not only in Vietnam, but yeah in a lot of other place. If we read the report or read the survey, like maybe 70, 80% of the IT professional will be familiar or will tell that they use some kind of Scrum in their daily work. So same to me.

[Rascal]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely one could say the most popular Agile framework out there right now. Of course it's not the only one, there are many others and it does not detract from any of the others that Scrum is different, but it is the most popular at the moment. When you think about that journey, like from project management, then understanding Scrum, starting to work as a Scrum master, that's a little bit of my journey as well. I'm sure there are some stories where things didn't go as expected. And because today is Fail Monday here on the podcast, let's explore one of those failure stories. We'll dive into the takeaways and the insights later. But tell us that story first. Aang.

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, yeah, actually continue with the story about the first time project manager practicing Scrum. So at that point in time we quite knew about Scrum. But like from my end I read the Scrum guide like a few times and I'm becoming very confident about the framework. It's easy to understand, I can remember all the ceremonies, all the events and I believe it is kind of easy to adopt and to succeed with Scrum. But the reality is not that easy. We can easily to mimic the mechanics of the framework, but when we applying all these Scrum roles and ceremonies in my team we quickly change that and for example like when we apply daily meeting with the team and it quickly turned into some debate conversation about the solution and we spent a lot of morning time energy for debate and then the team feel that hey, it's kind of we spend too much time about meeting, about talking about the work, but not enough time to do the work. So they want to not doing the daily meeting anymore, they want to update the daily progress in the team chats for example and then we not do the daily meeting anymore and we just messaging to each other and then it can also mess up like the SM and also the team lead will not know about the details of the progress, don't know much about the blockers about the problem we need to solve and then it causing more meeting after that like for us to fully understand the problem and try to brainstorm about the solution and sometimes we even not catching the problem with the dry time and then it causing the big issues at the end of the screen. So it's kind of and later on I know that way Is scrumbat. Like, we do Scrum, but we not do daily meeting. And we do Scrum but we're not doing like retrospective. So it is the version, the first version of Scrum I practicing with the team. And yeah, we're not like reaching the success at the end in that project. And the worst thing is we're not even learning and improving as a team, like because we do Scrum between losing the soul of that, the core to Scrum, it's not really about the limiting or planning or retrospective. It's about the value and principle. And we're missing that bit the first time we practice scrum. So I think every time after we try Scrum or any other framework with my team at the moment, we will not worry too much about the mechanics of that. Like not really about the roles or ceremonies or the meeting or report we have, but more about the way people interact and collaborate with each other. And it is the real thing that makes the difference.

[Rascal]

This is a very familiar story and I completely agree with you that it's too easy to get too caught up in the mechanics and forget about the real reason why we do certain things. However, we need to be ready for when that Scrum but anti pattern kicks in when people start complaining, hey, I don't really like the daily meetings, let's not have them. I don't really like the retrospectives, let's not have them. I've been in many situations, situations like that. I'm sure you have too. So when you think about that, let's call it tendency preference to avoid meetings, right? Like very often we say, oh, we have too many meetings. What have you learned about conveying and shaping the meeting so that there's real value for the whole team in participating and taking advantage of those SCRUM ceremonies?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah, it's a good question actually. When we using any framework, it always have the call that like in case of Scrumity, the three pillars and the values and then the mechanics of that is the ceremonies or roles and which we need to try to connect between the two. Like we not only simply do the daily meeting, but the team should understand why we do daily meeting. So the cost SCRUM is like transparency, inspection and adaptation based on the transparency, meaning that the information is available and accessible for everyone. And then we can inspect like whether we have the real problem with that and then based on that problem and we will decide like what we need to do to adapt to the situation. So the limiting is just the practice that reflect that core of the scrum. So we do the limiting to make sure that everyone in the team understand the real situation, understand what is the problem we are facing, and then based on that transparency, we can learn about the problem, we can try to think about the solution together, and then we can make the decision from there. So all these ceremonies, all the roles need to connect to the why, like why we do that. We do that because we want the transparency. We do that because we want the inspection and adaptation in the right time for the team to adapt to the change and adapt and solve the problem. So if we simply force the members and everyone to do the limiting, but they don't know why, they will have the defensive and they will do that, but not really believe it will help. So it is also not good for the team and for the member as well. So whenever we do something, we need to understand why and we need to share the reason to the team and people will understand that it is necessary for the success of the whole team. And then we can do it together in the more effective way. So it is, yeah, my approach, whenever we try to adopt something and try to connect between the physique of the work and also the why, the reason behind that.

[Rascal]

Absolutely. That's a great call out, right? Because the practices are, we could call it the implementation of the values and principles of a certain approach. And connecting the two is really part of our job as SCRUM Masters to make sure that people understand why we're doing that. And also perhaps, you know, sometimes we can say, okay, you don't like the daily meeting, fine. But you know, we have this transparency value, so how do we create transparency otherwise? Right? Let's run an experiment, learn from it, and then if it works, keep it. If it doesn't, let's go back to the daily meetings, right?

[Aang Vu]

Yeah. It's like open for the team to suggest and to try and explore new things. But of course we need to be very clear on what we want to achieve, like transparency. And then we can experiment any way to achieve that together. And the other thing, when we apply any new framework. So this term I also learned from SCRUM Master Tumb podcast, I think seven years, eight years ago, about Shu Ha Ri. So at that time, it's very new thing to me. And it's also very curious when I heard that work, that, that was like, surely, so what is that? So whenever we adopt any new framework, any new tools, we will try to do it properly first, following the guide and make it work first before we try to tweak anything and become scrum. But like my story at the beginning. So it is something I really want to remind myself or any other new Scrum master. So we need whenever we try things, we need to do it properly first, follow the guide and do it and then learn from the problem. And at that point in time, after we master the basic and then we can start tweaking things and become more creative with that.

[Rascal]

Absolutely. The shuhari is really an important mental model to learn about these different stages of practice of learning how to work with Scrum in practice. Thank you for sharing those stories.

[Aang Vu]

I Yep, thanks Fresco.

[Vasko]

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[Rascal]

And if you did, why not rate.

[Vasko]

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