I went and got myself a certification this week – I am now a Certified Scrum Master, thank you very much.

Overall, the class was interesting. The teacher was engaging and the format was interactive. I enjoyed having time to dive into “true” scrum practices, see them at work, and better understand the reasoning behind the process.

A common complaint about scrum is the volume of meetings – the sprint planning, the daily scrum, the backlog grooming, the review, the retrospective. That’s 5 mandated meetings per sprint!

The teacher made an interesting comment, however, that scrum is an effective solution, but it might not always be the most efficient solution. This, I believe, is very true, at least from the day to day perspective. As a project, using scrum might indeed be more efficient, but as an individual contributor on a daily basis, scrum can seem like a lot of overhead.

Indeed, in some agency environments, and in very small teams, scrum may be too much process – there are many situations where a leaner solution like kanban would be more appropriate.

As a systems engineer, I am typically hyper-focused on efficiency – but that should never come at the price of effectiveness. What may be most efficient on a daily basis might not be most effective in the long run.

Things to consider.