for your daily dose of reflection replace "Scrum" with communism (or capitalism if you like) and developers with citizens
Scrum disempowers developers
71–80 of 382 posts
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#72Here's a nice situation where the scrum team decided to become self-organizing and fired the manager who forced scrum onto them: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/112596/how-do-...
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#73Scrum is just a simplified process for applying some of the principles behind lean manufacturing to software engineering. One of the core principles of lean is - minimize work in progress (WIP). Sprint's are just a way of minimizing WIP. Why minimize WIP? Because WIP holds the risk that you're building the wrong thing. In manufacturing this might be using flawed parts that won't get tested until later in the process…
Agile workflow is based on the notion that software can be created thru progressive revelation. Like Moses wandering in the desert.
But, as you suggest, per the original writings, the real goal was to better manage upward, and has nothing to do with creating projects.
The alternative is what we gray beards call "have a plan". Well, as much as any one can plan for the unknown.
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#74Like any and every business theory, Scrum has one or two core ideas that are awesome, but could be explained adequately in a paragraph or two. This does not sell books and consulting, so it evolved into a field of its own. The fact that there is so much B.S. in Scrum doesn't mean that it has nothing of value to offer, though. Here's what I get out of it: 1. Sprints are a better way to organize than Waterfalls. I've e…
My experience is that a good team does a good job. A bad team doesn’t.
I think the focus on methodologies is to get a good result from an uneven team. Companies desperately want to treat programmers like standardized workers that can be mixed and matched as needed. The siren song of the methodology is that maybe it can achieve that goal. I have never seen this work in practice.
There are no quick fixes. People can improve but it takes time, dedication, and support.
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#75I find this article lacking, because it makes all of the same mistakes typical of these bandwagon anti-Scrum articles. Despite working in a a Scrum team, I recognise literally nothing of the problems that are described. Our product owner works closely with both commercial and development groups to build the backlog. Pressure to build good technical solutions is reasonably balanced with commercial requirements. The de…
I recognize the disfunction. What happens is that the owner of the backlog becomes the controller of how much time gets spent on what. With feature pressure, it's all new features all the time, with no scope to address debt.
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#76https://age-of-product.com/agile-micromanagement/ another interesting observation along this line; when the scrum master is a middle manager then he will micro manage the show - because that's the way he is supposed to function. Empowering the workers is a good idea, but it is not how most organizations work.
A slightly different take on why scrum becomes micromanagement, which has always seemed revealing to me: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ssssh....agile-is-...
I don't know about continuous integration; version control + automatic builds really helps to prevent the mess that you have without it. I still remember the nightmare of copying sources from and to a central directory.
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#77Our weekly "why scrum sucks" post that's really a "why my company does scrum wrong and I don't know how to fix it". Product owners push customer value. Of course. You should too. Code quality and refactors have business value. Reduced maintenance cost, fewer bugs, faster future dev. If you can't explain that to your product owner then maybe it's not worth doing. I think your big missing piece is the collective owners…
Scrum is antithetical to quality. We're 20 years into this experiment? I have yet to even hear someone tell a compelling narrative about doing QA/test in an "agile" context.
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#78Like any and every business theory, Scrum has one or two core ideas that are awesome, but could be explained adequately in a paragraph or two. This does not sell books and consulting, so it evolved into a field of its own. The fact that there is so much B.S. in Scrum doesn't mean that it has nothing of value to offer, though. Here's what I get out of it: 1. Sprints are a better way to organize than Waterfalls. I've e…
You're describing having a well defined goal, setting a critical path, and then regularly updating your progress. What we gray beards used to call "project management".
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#79My biggest beef with Scrum (and why I think it's a scam) is that they renamed everything, all the processes. Historically, there are three important sides, and roles, for each project. Product management - takes care what the customer wants to have build. Project management - takes care of what is delivered is on schedule and that there is enough material/personnel to build it. Architect/engineering lead - takes care…
I like trilemmas.
Mine is "marketing" (biz case, price, feature set, aka what), "engineering" (cost, schedule, aka how), "QA" (owns the release).
Loosely based on the Deming-style "quality circles" used at Ford and else where.
Re: Scrum disempowers developers
#80Like any and every business theory, Scrum has one or two core ideas that are awesome, but could be explained adequately in a paragraph or two. This does not sell books and consulting, so it evolved into a field of its own. The fact that there is so much B.S. in Scrum doesn't mean that it has nothing of value to offer, though. Here's what I get out of it: 1. Sprints are a better way to organize than Waterfalls. I've e…
The scrum manifesto is not overly verbose. It explains the value and concepts in a manor that does not lend itself to misrepresentation. There is definatly a lot of companies peddling hype around scrum but it has a very lean and strong core which is in no way pulling in that direction.
What's the scrum manifesto?