Questions and choices
Why I turned away from Scrum's creator to Scrumify my health
Update July 12 at 12:09pm CEST:
Dr. Sutherland replied to my message via LinkedIn. His response has been added to the bottom of this article.
Update July 11 at 12:43pm CEST:
I have sent a LinkedIn message to Dr. Sutherland and an email to the Frequency Foundation to give them an opportunity to respond to my article. If they do, I will publish the response.
I find Scrum inspiring. Not just for the productivity it can create, nor for the good it can do in the world.
To me, it’s a beautifully laid out statement of what’s really important in product development, and a structure proposed to help us focus on those important points.
I’ve read the Scrum Guide hundreds of times, and while it was clunky and hard to understand the first handful of times, each time it has revealed itself to be more nuanced, and to contain more and more answers to questions I have. It’s almost like beautiful poetry to me now.
I’ve found Agility, and Scrum in particular, incredibly useful for making positive changes in my life for years now. Adopting a mix of concepts and structure has both pointed me in the right direction in my personal projects, and given me the guard rails necessary to stay on track and make regular progress.
By extension, I’ve held Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber up as visionaries who put just the right words into their guide. They allowed those of us who wanted to, to pursue Scrum, and they gave it to us for free.
Which is why it brings me no pleasure to write this article.
I believe that Scrum and Agility can help us in many personal development endeavors, including in improving our health.
But Jeff Sutherland’s Scrum-based framework “Twice the Energy with Half the Stress” (TEHS) for improving your health is so problematic that I could not possibly adopt it.
I could not find solutions to all the problems I found in TEHS, which is why I created my own “Scrumify Your Health” framework. I continue to adjust and improve it as I use it in an experiment to see if it can actually work.
I won’t try to convince others to use my own framework (especially since I can’t even give anecdotal evidence of success yet), but I feel it’s important to lay out all the reasons people should avoid TEHS.
Frequency Foundation
TEHS is tightly tied to The Frequency Foundation, an organization led by Jeff Sutherland, that touts “frequency therapy” as a health solution.
The Frequency Foundation’s main offerings are considered pseudoscience or pseudomedicine by trusted medical and scientific communities, and are lacking scientific rigor.
After reading the intro to TEHS that Sutherland posted to LinkedIn in May, I assumed that TEHS was a framework in the same way that Scrum is - providing the structure and theory, but agnostic about actual practices. However, that’s not the case.
While TEHS focuses on six widely-accepted keys to good health (nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, mental health, and work-life balance), its number one component is frequency therapy to clear toxins and parasites. [link]
Here’s how the Frequency Foundation proposes that they can help you with clearing toxins and parasites:
You submit photographs of yourself and/or your home.
FF staff analyze these photographs to determine the electromagnetic frequencies of you and your surroundings.
They then use something called a Rife machine to emit electromagnetic waves matching your frequencies.
In the case that they believe you have a parasite, they will emit waves at a frequency they’ve determined will dispel that parasite.
This is done from their office, and their claim is that it will work remotely, wherever in the world you are.
This is, quite simply, pure snake oil.
I spent hours and hours trying to find any studies or evidence that their therapies are proven, and there is nothing to find.
Rife machines
Let’s start with the Rife machine. According to Cancer Research UK:
Rife machines produce low electromagnetic energy waves. These waves are similar to radio waves. Supporters of the treatment claim that the Rife machine can treat different conditions including cancer. There is no reliable evidence that the Rife machine works as a cure for cancer.
In fact, it’s not just cancer therapies that are unproven - there is not a scientific study that shows Rife machines can treat ANY condition at all. All claims of effectiveness are purely anecdotal.
Rife machines come with a risk of electric shock, and medical professionals express concern that those who believe claims of a “miracle cure” may stop less simple but more effective therapies for their ailments.
“Remote” therapies
Even if the Rife machine did work, its intended use for the 100 years it has existed was to connect the machine to a subject via a wire of some sort, and run electricity through them at a determined frequency.
The suggestion that a machine in some faraway location can be turned on and give you relief while you sit at home in your recliner has echoes of televangelist faith healing and remote prayer. These are predatory claims that take advantage of people desperate for solutions to problems they don’t fully understand.
Photo Frequency Analysis
Sutherland and his team claim that the frequency of a person or a building (or a dog, which they also serve at their “clinic”) can be captured in a photograph. Again, if we choose not to contest that frequency therapy can work, their claim is also that the person doesn’t have to ever come in contact with anyone associated with the therapy in order to be healed. Of course, this photo analysis is specifically only possible via the Frequency Foundation.
I don’t think I even need to explain that this doesn’t make any sense, but here’s how ChatGPT wrote it (since I couldn’t find a way to write this section without it dripping in sarcasm):
Photos capture a snapshot in time, lacking the temporal component necessary for detecting dynamic frequencies, such as those in sound or electromagnetic waves. To detect such frequencies, specialized equipment and methods are required, like microphones for sound or antennas for electromagnetic waves.
Thanks, Robot!
Product Placement
I really wanted to just ignore the frequency stuff, because the other main points seemed sound. In fact, during my own ongoing experiment, I’m also focusing on nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, and mental health. I haven’t touched on work-life balance yet, but I agree that it’s important.
However, the literature that Sutherland makes available regarding TEHS makes me inherently skeptical of his motives. Another factor here is that the Introduction to TEHS document is riddled with apparent product placement. I can’t tell if he is an affiliate of some companies, or has advertising agreements with them, but the document reads like he does.
Sutherland specifically endorses:
firstbeat.com analytics
Garmin Fenix 7 Pro smartwatch
Decom G7 underarm patch for glucose monitoring for diabetics
E400 glucose monitoring watch for everyone else
This technology is not considered reliable. From a bulletin released by the US FDA in February 2024:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers, patients, caregivers, and health care providers of risks related to using smartwatches or smart rings that claim to measure blood glucose levels (blood sugar) without piercing the skin. These devices are different than smartwatch applications that display data from FDA-authorized blood glucose measuring devices that pierce the skin, like continuous glucose monitoring devices (CGMs). The FDA has not authorized, cleared, or approved any smartwatch or smart ring that is intended to measure or estimate blood glucose values on its own.
heartmath.com apps for increasing heart “coherence”
Many characterizations of this organization and its products abound online, describing it as pseudoscience, snake oil, and even a cult. One very interesting takedown of the organization is here.
Beyond the endorsement of products that are from highly questionable sources, even those products from companies with good reputations like Garmin are repeatedly advertised in the TEHS literature to the point that it is hard not to assume Sutherland is getting a kickback.
Self-Promotion
I was also disappointed to find that the literature available on TEHS has so many gaps in it. This appears to be because this is not documentation in the way that the Scrum Guide is, but rather sales copy. And while Sutherland sells TEHS, he really oversells himself. These are all direct quotes from the intro document:
Supported by a substantial grant from the National Cancer Institute, I led groundbreaking research involving supercomputing simulations of human cells.
Ok, yes you’re a doctor.
At the core of these methodologies lies Scrum, which I invented, constituting 88% of Agile practices.
This might be technically true, but feels like it’s whitewashing your former partner and all of the others who came before you and influenced Scrum.
The origins of Scrum are deeply intertwined with my experiences, first as a cadet at West Point, and later as an F4 Phantom fighter pilot flying missions over North Vietnam. At West Point, I joined the gymnastics team, which was coached by the head of the Olympic team, surrounded by assistant coaches who were themselves Olympians.
West Point! Fighter Pilot! College Gymnast! I trained with Olympiaaaaaans!
This probably should not bother me as much as it does, because much of Sutherland’s previous writing is in the same self-aggrandizing vein - notably his book “Scrum: Twice the Work in Half the Time.”
In fact, there is dreadfully little literature available on what TEHS is that isn’t just promotional material. I’ve included at the end of this piece an exhaustive list of articles and resources I’ve been able to find about or referencing TEHS by Sutherland or anyone affiliated with him.
Mapping Scrum to TEHS
On this point, I will choose not to take public issue with TEHS, out of respect for Dr. Sutherland. His work in developing Scrum has been foundational for modern product development, and it would be too presumptive of me to challenge the way he chose to structure his framework or the parallels with Scrum he wants to draw.
I will only say that I would not have - and have not - done it the same way. But I did take inspiration from some of his choices, and it’s possible that over the course of my experiment I’ll move more toward some of his other ones.
I’ll write about my own approach at greater length after I’ve completed at least my initial 12 sprints.
TEHS is not free
Maybe I just expected it to be free because Scrum is, but this was one of my first red flags. Every other framework is free too - Kanban, XP, even SAFe. Sure, you can spend money to become an expert, but that’s mostly for those who want to guide their teams to use it. And it’s optional.
But with TEHS, there is no access to the framework without spending a minimum of a $99 fee for a consultation with some kind of expert. I did not (and will not) pay this consultation fee, but I have a strong feeling that it leads you directly into “frequency therapy.”
So for me, this is the final straw. There is no framework for improving your health if it’s not publicly available. I’m convinced it’s just a mechanism to trade on Sutherland’s success with Scrum in order to drum up business for an organization that makes many questionable claims.
For all of these reasons, despite my honest belief that Scrum can indeed help people improve their health, I not only cannot endorse TEHS, but I must encourage my readers NOT to adopt it. I hope to have a positive recommendation for another approach soon.
Resources I’ve been able to find that talk about or mention TEHS:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/frequency-research-foundation/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19dmKXOM66mzqv4Z5QYLD-QcJM--IDij0/edit
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2024/05/15/transform-health-tehs-scrum-framework/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2024/04/22/revolutionizing-healthcare-monitoring-therapy/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2024/03/01/embracing-zen-in-healthcare-the-tehs-framework-and-the-art-of-boiling-an-egg/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2024/02/29/the-tehs-scrum-framework-for-health-and-performance-harnessing-physics-for-universal-health-and-performance-enhancement/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2024/02/20/the-tehs-framework-for-health-and-performance-powering-up-your-daily-life/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2024/02/08/tehs-scrum-framework-revolutionizing-health-and-performance/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/08/21/tehs-glucose-drop-how-to-lose-weight-without-fail/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/07/11/electromagnetic-therapy/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/07/07/tehs-framework-boosting-energy-with-cinnamon-bark-essential-oil-and-frequency-therapy/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/05/25/overcoming-metabolic-syndrome-harnessing-the-power-of-the-tehs-framework-and-real-time-glucose-monitoring/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/04/23/the-tehs-framework-doubling-your-energy-and-halving-your-stress-to-achieve-longevity/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/04/20/revolutionizing-healthcare-with-mobius-loop-and-scrum-accelerating-well-being-improvement/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/03/07/boost-energy-levels-reduce-stress-frequency-stimulation-garmin-watch-body-battery-firstbeat-technologies/
https://www.frequencyfoundation.com/2023/01/15/twice-the-energy-with-half-the-stress-bonus-weight-loss/
I asked Jeff Sutherland if he would like to respond to my article. Below is his response.
The link Dr. Sutherland provided is the same document I already linked to in my article above.
I stand by my position.