How to avoid pseudo Scrum adoption?

I have recently come across a company who claimed they had adopted Scrum for several years, from the conversation I had with one of their Scrum Master, he revealed to me how his company started the Agile journey.

He has been with the company for more than 13 years, started his career as a developer and work all the way up his career ladder to be their Project Manager. After the company decided to adopt Scrum, he has changed his title to Scrum Master.

He shared with me that he is now "managing" 3 Scrum Team, each team has a team size of around 6 to 7 people. The team is aiming at delivering "working software" to their BA, which is also their Product Owner. The have a sprint of 1 month length, so they name the sprint according to the year and month, for example FY1701 for the January Sprint in year 2017. Every day, the team will conduct a daily stand-up which will take around 30 mins. The development team is formed with staff from other functional departments, such as designers, testers and developers who reports to their own line manager respectively. They are working part time for 1 project, a team member might be an active member in other Scrum Team.

For those of you who have learn Scrum, I am sure you could immediately spot several problem with the setup mentioned here. Except for the terminology, I could not see anything in the Scrum's guide the company has been adhered to.

From the discussion, he explained that the company has decided to modify the Scrum process framework in order to better suit their environment. While in principle there is nothing wrong with this decision, however I do not recommend any company try to do this from day one.

Instead, I will recommend any company who wish to adopt Scrum follow the ShuHaRi concept, when come to tailoring the Scrum process framework for their company.

The ShuHaRi concept is an idea that a person passes through three stages of gaining knowledge:

Shu: In this beginning stage the student follows the teachings of one master precisely. He concentrates on how to do the task, without worrying too much about the underlying theory. If there are multiple variations on how to do the task, he concentrates on just the one way his master teaches him.

Ha: At this point the student begins to branch out. With the basic practices working he now starts to learn the underlying principles and theory behind the technique. He also starts learning from other masters and integrates that learning into his practice.

Ri: Now the student isn't learning from other people, but from his own practice. He creates his own approaches and adapts what he's learned to his own particular circumstances.

For a company who wish to adopt Scrum and Agile practices, in the beginning (Shu), the company should just adopt the process framework as it is, and follow the guide to every detail. They should start with just one small team to avoid major change to their organization structure and process. This will allow the organization to have the chance to experience and understand the process framework, and the business reason behind every suggestion in the guide.

Once the company has experienced and completed at least 2 projects with the same team, then they should expand and form more Scrum team. Still, at this stage they should resist any temptation to making changes to the process framework and suggestion in the guide.

After some time (some company actually take one or two years) to gather experience running their project using this new process framework, they should gather enough knowledge to reach the stage (Ha) where they could slowly making necessary adjustment to the process framework carefully. They need a good business justification on every adjustment make.

Till date, there are only a handful of company who had reached the (Ri) stage to create their own approach.

Following this ShuHaRi approach, hopefully the company could avoid making adjustment to the process framework and practices prematurely and end up with Pseudo Scrum adoption.