Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
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Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
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Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#2Scrum proponents (a label I would tentatively apply to myself) would tell you that 'you're doing it wrong' but unfortunately a point-by-point reply to this article would detract from the general problem here: Scrum is intended to be the straightest line towards measuring your real progress on a project, and not much else
If youre working on a project where it is important that you have as-accurate-as-is-realistic an idea of the size of the project, or more specifically your progress through that project, then I can't see how a methodology could be any simpler.
If having a good idea of the size of your project over time and your progress through that project are not very important from a management perspective, the Scrum artefacts will seem like, and will probably in fact be, needless overhead.
Scrum is not opinionated about the actual development methodology so claims about how it affects the code that is written are themselves a bad smell IMO.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#3Scrum proponents (a label I would tentatively apply to myself) would tell you that 'you're doing it wrong' but unfortunately a point-by-point reply to this article would detract from the general problem here: Scrum is intended to be the straightest line towards measuring your real progress on a project, and not much else If youre working on a project where it is important that you have as-accurate-as-is-realistic an…
oh and I have attended some of those expensive Scrum 1-week courses and saw the darker side of that community - it definitely has a cult following that give it a bad name, but I've been to similar conventions around design patterns, object-oriented and (to a lesser degree) functional programming so I think that the community problem is not particular to Scrum.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#4In my opinion, the good thing about Scrum is that you can tweak the rules to fit your needs, aka, "Scrum in name only".
The daily standup, IMO, should be only to remove impediments, and if you have none, then a sentence or two will suffice. I see the DS as the most useful meeting, as you are aware of what your workmates are doing.
And if Scrum is still a pain in the back, then you have Kanban, which is sort of Scrum without the straitjackets.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#5For our dev team Scrum works fine, the key is to use it just as a framework, and not following every rule to the letter. For example:
- Obsession with points
We don't have that obsession, sometimes we even don't assign story points, just hour estimates
- Meeting extravaganza -
Again, for example remote people don't need to attend all meetings, sometimes we just clarify the work items outside the meetings.
- The sprint has its own backlog, which can be changed only in agreement with the team and the product owner.
We also don't have this... if I finished my tasks, I just move new item from backlog to sprint and work on it.
- Refactoring, reading code, researching a topic in detail are all seen as "not working on actual story points, which is what you are paid to do".
This has some truth to it... regarding research, we do this outside the Scrum.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#6"Because the assumption is that refactoring will be a few hours' work, or even shorter if it's renaming a class here and replacing a file there. These are only the most superficial cases of refactoring, however..."
That always bothers me, too. The changes you can make continuously are hardly worth bothering to worry about, because they're so small and quick and decent developers will do them automatically. It's the changes that take several days or a week that really make the difference in the long term.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#7I've been doing Scrum-driven development for a few years now after working much more independently for most of my career. I understand why managers like it because it at least lends some structure and predictability to what is an inherently unpredictable enterprise.
But the author's criticisms of the incentives of Scrum are on point I think. Because the stories are always articulated in terms of user facing features they encourage developers to hack things together in the most expedient way possible and completely fail to capture the need to address cross cutting concerns, serious consideration of architecture, and refactoring.
This is how you can get two years into a project and have managers and clients that think that things are going well when the actual code is an increasingly unmaintainable rats' nest. Good devs confronted with this kind of mess will eventually burn out on sticking their necks out defending necessary but opaque refactoring tasks and move on to greener pastures.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#8For our dev team Scrum works fine, the key is to use it just as a framework, and not following every rule to the letter. For example: - Obsession with points We don't have that obsession, sometimes we even don't assign story points, just hour estimates - Meeting extravaganza - Again, for example remote people don't need to attend all meetings, sometimes we just clarify the work items outside the meetings. - The sprin…
Sounds like you are doing "scrum but" aka your own methodology.
However their article is criticizing pure unadulterated scrum.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#9Maybe it's me, but the real issue with professional scrum masters is that it's rare to find any that practice agility as a way of life.
Majority of professionals I've met appear to lack any ability to improvise and literally just follow the book on what to do without any critical analysis of how their situation fits with the defaults provided.
Basically, my issue with scrum is its community.
Re: Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
#10do we see bank analysts playing 'planning poker' when it comes to putting together pitch decks or research analyses? no. and they'd transfer out of any group where a manager tried to implement such a practice.
if a software engineer is more than a couple years out of college, i don't think she/he should put up with it either.