Scrum’s Black Mirror

Think your team is Agile because you run sprints and hold retros?

Think your team is Agile because you run sprints and hold retros? Think again. Many teams unintentionally repackage Waterfall inside two-week increments—freezing scope, staging hand-offs, and delaying feedback just like before. In this post, we shine a light on Scrum’s dark side: the recurring mini-Waterfall pattern that slows delivery, hides risk, and erodes real agility.

Scrum is meant to break the slow, risk-heavy patterns of Waterfall. Yet in many teams, the ceremonies and timeboxes simply recreate old habits on a shorter cycle. What emerges isn’t agility—it’s a sprint-shaped delusion.

Let’s examine how Waterfall lives on inside (often two-week) increments, and why these recurring “mini-Waterfalls” quietly undermine flow, feedback, and delivery quality.