This company faces the problem that customers often complain about a lack of clarity about the process and insufficient quality of the produced websites. After many internal discussions some developers suggest that Scrum might be a solution. They quickly follow a Scrum training and declare Scrum as their new way of working.

But serious problems arise right away. The clients of the web agency demand clear guarantees about the product to deliver. They also feel very uncomfortable with the fact that they have to be so involved. The clients avoid taking any responsibility and refuse to appoint somebody for the role of Product Owner. The Scrum team assigns someone within the team as a substitute.

The sales team has a strong benefit to get new clients by promising everything that they want to hear. The new work approach makes it even easier. The already problematic scope creep becomes a bigger problem which results in more bugs and functionality not meeting expectations.

The owner of the web agency had understood that Scrum would make everything much more profitable. But the lack of signed documents resulted in clients who do not want to pay without that certain work is performed first.

There are also a lot of internal problems. Some employees are very demotivated because they can not work alone anymore. The whole well-intentioned attempt is getting out of control and causes a lot of of trouble.

Analysis

The internal structure and regulations are drastically changed. But vision, strategy and goals are not adapted to the new situation. They are actually under stress and paralyzed by unknown implications.

No account has been taken with heavy financial consequences. For sales, the incentive model does not fit the new way of working: they have to choose between being honest or having personal gain.

The environment sees the services as a commodity product and doesn't accept to invest in it like a research project. The market is full of similar providers with readymade products for a fixed price. Internal procurement rules prohibit to take such risks.

Assessment

Trying to solve a problem of no clear work process by choosing Scrum is troublesome because Scrum is not a process. The focus of it is much more on innovation. It often solves the problem of heavy bureaucratized organizations where there is no freedom to try new things. This web agency had a problem with standardization of their product and process. While Agile practices could be helpful, a much more thorough transition was needed to succeed.

The quality problems could have various causes such as not the right skills of the developers. Limiting and clarifying of the scope of the project has much more to do with sales training and positioning of the company than the internal structure.