Scrum stops the resource shell game
Walk down any street in NYC and you're likely to see someone taking people's money in the shell game—a quick-handed guy (called a thimblerig) moves shells around while a poor guy has to guess which shell the ball is under. The sucker will never be right, because the shell game is a fraudulent game—it tricks players into feeling confident so that the thimblerig can take their money. I see ETT resourcing as such fraud!
When project crunch time is near, managers respond by shuffling around people. This shuffling gives the appearance of efficiency, and since money is exchanged—in the form of wages and budgets—this is fraud. The resource shell game hides the real problem, which is that the company is trying to do too much with too few people. The ScrumMaster's job is to make the gross imbalance between demand and supply visible, and put an end to the thimblerigging. One place to begin is by helping the business identify its strategy and prioritize its initiatives...
