If the Scrum Alliance Cared
The motto of the Scrum Alliance used to be “Transforming the World of Work”. In the fine print of their web site, it appears that the current motto may be “On a mission to create agile workplaces that are joyful, prosperous, and sustainable”.
But let’s take them at their current fine-print word, and at their previous word, and suppose, against strong evidence, that something like this is the mission of the Scrum Alliance:
A Scrum “workplace” has one Product Owner, one ScrumMaster, possibly one Coach, and as many team members as it takes to deliver a product increment every Sprint. (Emphasis mine.)
There will generally be around a half-dozen team members. On a software Scrum team, those will mostly be developers with programming or testing focus. Yes. There are probably six developers for every Product Owner or ScrumMaster.
It seems to me that for a team like that to be “joyful, prosperous, and sustainable”, the work lives of those developers would be critical. We can’t have a joyful team if those six people are miserable. We can’t be prosperous if those six people aren’t productive and thriving. We can’t be sustainable if those six people are burning out, or burning to get out.
