Scrum is simple to understand, difficult to practice well. Many teams do 'Scrum-but' without realizing it and wonder why it doesn't work.
1. Scrum without a real Product Owner. The PO is the most frequently poorly filled role. Too often it's a project manager rebadged, or worse, a senior developer wearing the hat on top of everything else. A real PO spends 80% of their time on the backlog, stakeholders and product vision. Without this, the team develops in a vacuum.
2. Sprint Planning as task distribution. It's not the manager who distributes tickets — it's the team collectively committing to an objective and choosing how to achieve it. If your Sprint Planning looks like a Gantt chart, something has been lost along the way.
3. Velocity as a performance KPI. Velocity is an internal planning tool, not a productivity indicator. Comparing it between teams or using it to evaluate people destroys trust and encourages artificial story splitting to inflate numbers.
4. Ignoring impediments. If the Scrum Master notes obstacles without ever getting them resolved, the ceremony loses its meaning. Removing an impediment is the Scrum Master's number one job — not facilitating meetings.
5. Skipping the retrospective. It's the first ceremony cut under deadline pressure. Yet it's the one that allows the team to improve. Without a retro, the same problems repeat sprint after sprint, indefinitely.