Thanks for the interesting feedback. My post is focused on software development as thats what I work with, but you are correct Scrum on its own isn’t focused to software development it is a project management practice. However I do feel that there is a strong emphasis within the Agile community encouraging scrum to be used in smaller teams. If there is a large force of developers, this force would be more potent if sub divided into smaller teams instead of one large ‘infantry’ like forces. There are many huge advantageous such as better relationships and communication related to small teams which support the scrum/agile practice such as ‘encouraging conversation’ with user stories.

“Scrum is a software development process for small teams. As Coplien and Brooks have shown, small teams that work independently are more effective..4,5 Well seasoned research in social dynamics supports this view.”

- http://members.cox.net/risingl1/Articles/IEEEScrum.pdf

In your feedback above :

Extreme Programmers on the other hand, really are like the special forces. We have lots of special software development-specific practices and tools that scrum developers aren’t taught about… and it takes at least several months to get through the basic training rather than the few days of token training (if any) that scrum devs get…

I would guess that this is your implementation of Scrum and XP, not scrum specifically. In many companies this may not be the case as you have described here. You seem to have a clear distinction between Scrum Developers and XP where this appears to be specific to your example. Where I work we have a much smaller team and there are some XP practices which are embedded into those using Scrum. A good mix of experienced and less experienced programmers are in each scrum team and the velocity of the team is a combination of the skill sets.

Scrum says nothing about software development practices, just a different kind of project management. Scrum developers are like the infantry - loads of them, using standardised equipment doing pretty standard work.

Extreme Programmers on the other hand, really are like the special forces. We have lots of special software development-specific practices and tools that scrum developers aren’t taught about… and it takes at least several months to get through the basic training rather than the few days of token training (if any) that scrum devs get…

Cheers

The only thing I’d add is that unlike a military structure, Scrum doesn’t adhere to a hierarchical structure. There shouldn’t really be a leader and subordinates. Instead it should be a collaborative effort with the ability to self-manage and self-organise.

Cheers, Phil.