Troubleshooting

Symptom → fix, in the order you'll hit them.

Standups take 45 minutes

Symptom: the "15-minute" standup sprawls into problem- solving and status theater.

Cause: no one enforces the format, or it's really a status meeting for a manager.

Fix: the facilitator cuts discussion with "take it offline after standup" — every time, kindly, until the habit forms. If one person needs everyone's status, that's a reporting need; solve it with a written update, not by hijacking the team's synchronization.

Retros change nothing

Symptom: the same complaints appear every retro; action items die quietly.

Cause: retros produce wishes, not owned commitments.

Fix: each retro ends with one change, one owner, and a check-in next retro ("did the change happen? did it help?"). One change that sticks beats ten that don't.

Everything is priority one

Symptom: the backlog has no order, or the top ten items are all "urgent."

Cause: no one has the authority — or the stomach — to say no.

Fix: that's the Product Owner's job, and it requires backing from above. A practical forcing function: the team may only work on the top N items, so ordering is the decision. "Everything is urgent" collapses the moment someone must pick what goes first.

Estimates are always wrong (in the same direction)

Symptom: every sprint delivers half what was planned.

Cause: planning from wishes instead of measured velocity, or pressure to commit to more.

Fix: plan the next sprint from the average of the last three sprints' completed points — not from optimism. If velocity is 20 and the plan needs 40, the plan is wrong, not the team. Say so early; it's cheaper.

The board is a lie

Symptom: the Kanban board says three items in progress; developers are actually juggling nine.

Cause: the board doesn't match reality, so nobody trusts it, so nobody updates it — a death spiral.

Fix: rebuild the board from reality in one session: walk the actual work, place every item honestly, set WIP limits you can keep. A board with an embarrassing "blocked" column is infinitely more useful than a pretty fiction.

"Agile" was imposed from above

Symptom: a reorg declares the company agile; teams get new titles, same managers, same deadlines.

Cause: process adopted as rebranding, without the authority shifts agile requires.

Fix: you can't fix this from inside a ceremony. The honest moves: find the smallest unit where you can run the real loop (one team, real backlog, real demos) and prove it works there — or recognize the label is permanent and stop expecting the substance.

One person does all the agile

Symptom: the Scrum Master maintains the board, writes the stories, runs the retros — the team just codes.

Cause: agile became one person's job instead of the team's way of working.

Fix: rotate facilitation. The team owns the process together or it isn't theirs. A Scrum Master who does everything for the team is a very organized bottleneck.