Has Scrumbut got you down?

I'll never forget the word "scuttlebutt". In high school, Almon G. Strain, my band-director, used the term all of the time. It wasn't until my adult years that I met Fred Muller—like Mr. Strain, Fred was former Navy—and Fred explained about gossip and the ship's water dispenser.

This week, I heard a similar sounding term, "scrumbut". Rather than wait 20 years to find out what that one meant, I scoured the web.

I found that it was a term invented last year by Eric Gunnerson. It describes folks who are partially using Scrum and wondering why they are not reaping the benefits of fully using scrum. For example, Hal posted that his team was following scrum, but they did not stand in their daily meetings. That's scrumbut—not scrum.

My grandmother had a term for folks who do a job half-way and claim they did it all of the way. The term she used was "lazy butt".