The Professional ScrumMaster's Handbook

Prepare for change aches and pains

Virginia Satir was a psychologist and therapist who created the Change Process Model that describes how people accept and adapt to change. The following diagram, adapted directly from her model, shows what happens when people are asked to move to Agile ways of working. Over to the left, the existing (or late) status quo is the waterfall way of thinking and doing things. When confronted with the foreign element—or "let's do Scrum!"—people resist and attempt to revert to form, or to what's comfortable. When the pressure remains on to change, chaos and depression can and often follow and performance suffers.

At ...