I've just joined a growing list of luminaries (including Ron Jeffries and Scott Ambler) who have been kicked off the Scrum Development User Group by Ken Schwaber. Our only sin appears to be discussing Scrum in a manner that challenges his belief system. I am not really sure how many have been thrown off the site as most of these are done unceremoniously. Ken contends many of the expelled were "griping" about Scrum. He had the audacity of creating a user group called Scrum Gripes where he said we can go talk about Scrum as we pleased - as if all we were doing is griping about Scrum.

My sin was for discussing the relationship between Lean and Scrum. Apparently this is off purpose even though most of our clients using Scrum find Lean incredibly useful in learning how to adopt it (and since I'd guess we are in the top 5 Scrum training/coaching companies in the country that is quite a few) . Ken now denies Scrum comes from Lean. An interesting comment since his own (not yet published) Scrum Papers and Scrum creator Jeff Sutherland both say Scrum is based on Lean.

If you'd be interested in seeing the posts that did me in, go look at Net Objectives' new user group Lean-Agile-Scrum where we discuss anything related to agile methods. There are three posts that relate to this, starting with the one labeled "I've been kicked off the Island". I find this sequence of events quite ironic as the day after I was kicked of I was doing an Agile Estimation and Analysis course for a team adopting Scrum. They particularly loved the discussion of Lean and Scrum - the same discussion for which I was removed from the Scrum Development site.

Please join our new user group to have a broader and richer discussion of Scrum than is allowed on Ken's group.

Alan Shalloway

CEO, Net Objectives