Scrum is fragile, not Agile • Hacker News Board

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#221

Post by jon-wood » Mon, May 27, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

orangeshark wrote: post #10

I don't really have that much industry experience but have been reading a lot about development processes and practices. It seems there just isn't one development process that will solve all your problems and allow you always create successful software. To me it seems you just need to find what works for your team and continuously work on improving on it. What might work today, probably won't work for your team tomor…

You may not have much industry experience, but you’ve managed to hit the core of the problem. There is no one process that will work for every team, or even every project.

Every team at my workplace runs a different process. We’ve got a team developing new features who are running an iterative agile process, allowing them to react to changes ok requirements or unexpected issues with as little disruption as possible. We’ve also got a team doing B2B projects, essentially rebranding our mobile apps and platform for different companies, and that’s pretty traditional waterfall - I wouldn’t in a million years use waterfall for new features, but when you’re running through a set of well understood tasks that need delivering on schedule to coincide with work by third parties it gets the job done.

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#222

Post by Pulletwee12549 » Mon, May 27, 2019, 8:43 AM UTC

In my experience, I was lucky to apply Scrum and Agile correctly so now I understand them and can distinguish between them. In my current job, there are no chances to replicate those conditions and I do not expect Scrum to succeed (although we use a lot of Scrum terms to define what we do).

I think one should have experienced a successful scrum project before being able to criticise it.

Scrum is a tool: you may be Agile without using Scrum or you may find easier to be Agile using Scrum. Doing Scrum does not make you Agile. Scrum is hard and implementing it takes different skills than those proven by individuals who can write code.

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#223

Post by sime2009 » Mon, May 27, 2019, 8:47 AM UTC

edsykes wrote: post #196

just to offset a bit about scrum being bad: I have used SCRUM over 15 years to run teams and it worked. Most of the problems I am hearing on here are culture problems and no process can fix that. Regarding planning, a day per scrum is normal - sometimes longer, you have to use your judgement to determine when to move from design to implementation. Also, heavy use of spiking stories to learn enough to create the right…

Can you explain a little bit more about your "spiking stories" and how you use them?

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#224

Post by Sammi » Mon, May 27, 2019, 8:54 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #107

barrkel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrum is iterated waterfall. By iterating faster, inaccurate estimation is shown up sooner. On the other hand, developers are treated like cogs in a feature factory, munching through backlog items fed to them by product managers. I think it works well enough, for a few years. I don't think it's sustainable - the blinkers of "sprints" encourage growth of tech debt because nobody has an eye on the future and Product wo…

> Scrum is iterated waterfall. No, it isn't. Iterated waterfall is at least as old as the first paper discussing waterfall, but while scrum mandates interations, it doesn't mandate much about how work is done in the iterations, and specifically does not mandate the process steps associated with waterfall; further, it emphatically rejects the role separations and handoffs associated with waterfall during the iteration…

You can scream "That's not actually Scrum" untill the day you die. It doesn't change the fact that that's how it is perceived and done in almost every place that says they do Scrum.

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#225

Post by danpalmer » Mon, May 27, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

Agile – the only word in the English language that inverses its meaning when capitalised.

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#226

Post by nitely » Mon, May 27, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

forgotmypw wrote: post #41

I've worked on more than 10 different Scrum teams, and have seen it done well exactly once. When it was good, it was very good. But we spent one entire workday (7 hours) on each sprint follow-up meeting, and then another entire workday planning the next sprint. That is what it took to write the stories, break them down into one-point pieces, prioritize with the PO, pass the stories out to the devs, etc. Most places j…

7 hours of meetings? did people show up the next few days for work?

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#227

Post by sadness2 » Mon, May 27, 2019, 9:20 AM UTC

The best of agile can be summed up in one piece of advice: "Create short feedback loops". Nail that and you can't go too far wrong.

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#228

Post by Melchizedek » Mon, May 27, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

tamrix wrote: post #121

beachy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrum won out IMO because it's an awesome word and conjures up subliminal images of brute force pushing obstacles out of the way, bringing success to the team. Execs can relate to it without even knowing what it is.

Scrum won because in reality not everyone is a wizz bang developer like your guys so make yourself out to be.

Scrum (and other methods that try in vain to make developers replaceable cogs) won because it enabled bad developers to hide among the good ones, and avoid personal responsibility.

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#229

Post by dnial02 » Mon, May 27, 2019, 9:58 AM UTC

swinglock wrote: post #179

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, and I replied "We don't know because we've never done this before, and we can only compare to the most similar work we've done, and any existing data." Before I could say more, they I interrupted: "You have to know, it's your job, or you don't know what your doing," or something along those lines. It was the most heated I've felt. I know what I'd reply with today, but I was younger and more naive then.

What would you reply today?

Not OP, but I will answer with the second option and ask him what I should do?

Re: Scrum is fragile, not Agile

#230

Post by world32 » Mon, May 27, 2019, 10:03 AM UTC

yibg wrote: post #202

The best place I've worked at as a developer essentially had no process. It's also the place I really saw the benefits of having good managers (or a project manager, but here the manager took this role). Essentially the "process" was: - Someone gets an idea to do something, e.g. PMs wants to add a feature. - The manager (maybe with the help of a dev) figures out which teams need to be involved (e.g. dependencies). -…

100% this. For a team of good developers this is by far the best model to get things done. SCRUM only serves to prevent a very bad team from doing even worse then they would do otherwise. However for a team of competent developers SCRUM is painfully stifling.