Christophe MontagneInterim CTO · Advisory

Scrum in Name Only/Part II · The drift·2 min read

10The vicious cycle

How temporal and functional myopia reinforce each other.

The drifts described so far are not independent. They reinforce one another, which explains why Scrum-in-name-only teams rarely stabilise. Their decline accelerates.

Two forms of myopia are at work. Temporal myopia shrinks the horizon to the current sprint, and the plan is lost. Functional myopia shrinks the horizon to one's own layer, and the story is lost. In both cases, nobody holds the big picture, and the increment stops making sense. Architecture suffers from both at once.

The reinforcing loop of drift A loop of five steps: a short planning horizon leaves no room for design, debt accumulates, delivery slows, pressure rises on the next sprint, and the horizon shortens further. Fragmented stories, the result of functional myopia, feed directly into debt. Short planning horizon Only the next sprint No room for design Enablers lose to features Debt accumulates Code gets harder to change Delivery slows Velocity falls Pressure on the sprint Deliver features now Fragmented stories Functional myopia REINFORCING LOOP
Figure 5 · The reinforcing loop of drift. Each turn shortens the horizon further, so the decline accelerates rather than stabilises.

Follow the loop once. A team that plans only the next sprint has no place for enablers, which always lose to visible features. The design degrades and debt accumulates, accelerated by fragmented stories that integrate late and poorly. Delivery slows. Management reacts by increasing pressure on the next sprint, often through velocity targets. Under that pressure, the horizon shrinks even further, and the loop turns again.

Two consequences follow. First, polishing the rituals cannot break the loop, because none of its steps is a ritual. Second, the loop can be broken at several points: restoring a horizon beyond the sprint, protecting design work from feature-by-feature prioritisation, slicing stories by value, or removing velocity targets. Part III examines each of these levers.

Section takeaways

  • Temporal myopia loses the plan; functional myopia loses the story. Architecture suffers from both.
  • The drifts form a reinforcing loop, which explains why decline accelerates.
  • The loop is broken by restoring horizons, ownership and design time, not by perfecting the ceremonies.