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Why Scrum is stressing you out

rethinkingsoftware.substack.com

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Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#251

Post by randomdata »

mrits wrote: post #218
AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #3

I've learned to hate software process. If you have team sizes set sanely and empower devs to do what they need to do in order to accomplish the goal, they'll be fine without the management overhead of arbitrarily imposed productivity flow. Agile et al, along with 99% of the features in ticketing systems, exist to make managers feel like they are justifying their paycheck. If you are a manager and this makes you angry…

The reality is even good devs tend to work hard on the wrong thing. Accountability comes from your peers as much as your manager. If this makes you angry you are one of the bad ones.

Give good devs a direct line to the customer and they're apt to always work on the right thing, but will spend a lot more time dealing with the customer and a lot less time in development in order to do so.

Leave good devs to play telephone through a middle-man, what we call the manager, and they almost certainly will work on the wrong things, but will have a lot more time to do it.

I wonder which is actually more productive? Agile (of the Manifesto kind) posits that the former is most productive, but Agile (of the fake kind) seems to always want to revolve around the latter. The general sentiment is that fake Agile is the one that gets it wrong, so presumably cutting out the manager is what is most productive, but more data is welcome.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#252

Post by _heimdall »

> Scrumfall: The Real (and Worse) Picture

This section is very, very accurate. I was at a startup that ran scrum really out of a need to jeep our remote team communicating regularly. Goals were loose and generally defined by each dev doing the work.

That eventually broke down and we had quarterly goals driven by marketing and sprints with rigid, increasingly stressful goals. The difference in developer burnout was plain as day, once scrum ends up overlaid on a quarterly (or similar) waterfall the value of scrum is gone and people burn out fast.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#253

Post by noisy_boy »

bruce511 wrote: post #95
Aeolun wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed. (Assuming you mean "create" as in write, as distinct from create as in get funded.) You are essentially saying “Shit is bad, give up on it ever improving.”

Not at all. Quite the opposite. To improve the situation you first need to understand it. It seems to me that most devs don't understand the root problem, so they both don't understand, and don't constructively improve the current solution. Improvement is not "leave me alone". Improvement is finding efficient ways to remove stress from higher-ups. Because stress rolls downhill.

> Improvement is finding efficient ways to remove stress from higher-ups. Because stress rolls downhill.

Good luck with that because higher-ups have even-higher-ups until you reach the top. The bigger the pay packet, the more inflated the lifestyle and the associated stress of missing on the ever ballooning target. It is self-inflicted and never-ending; sacrifices of the lowly soldier will never quench that thirst.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#254

Post by marcosdumay »

Lutger wrote: post #229
twunde wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daily stand-ups, the main benefit of which is that managers (EMs/PMs) get daily updates on status. Sprints themselves which promise that a certain amount of work will always get done, without any free time being wasted. A lot of the ceremonies in general are mostly helpful to the EM/PM. How many things that you're doing are actually improving how you get work done? Especially when you consider how much time is spent…

There are a lot of things better than scrum, but mostly these are all wrong ways to implement it. Daily: should average at 10 min, 15 min is really the maximum. Including prep. So 5-15 min. No status updates! The daily is about getting people unstuck with their current tasks and quickly aligning on what to do next. If it is not useful for the team, the implementation is wrong. Doesn't mean it always has to be useful…

The ages old "you are doing Agile wrong".

When nobody manages to do the thing right, then the thing isn't good. It doesn't matter what platonic ideal you hold for it.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#256

Post by liampulles »

Ok, hot takes incoming:

* Some of the article and commentary here read to me like Scrum is being equated with bad management, or a bad relationship with management. If the source of stress boils down to unrealistic deadlines and high workloads, then that problem will persist with a kanban process, or extreme programming, or "yolo free for all".

* A relationship is a two-way street. Yes its certainly possible that your manager is a dickhead, or incompetent, or both - but it is also possible that they don't know how unrealistic their expectations are because you have failed to PUSH BACK properly. A healthy relationship includes saying no, and explaining problems - that is part of a developers job.

* So many developers (my younger self included) WILDLY overestimate their ability to communicate effectively with non-tech people. The idea that you are going to go from having a bad management relationship, to talking to the business directly is... lets say "misguided". I'm still pretty bad at it, but at least I know that I'm lacking here - I'm very thankful for the people who are well versed in stakeholder management (which really is a skill).

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#257

Post by replwoacause »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #8
AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #3

I've learned to hate software process. If you have team sizes set sanely and empower devs to do what they need to do in order to accomplish the goal, they'll be fine without the management overhead of arbitrarily imposed productivity flow. Agile et al, along with 99% of the features in ticketing systems, exist to make managers feel like they are justifying their paycheck. If you are a manager and this makes you angry…

Just keep in mind that a lot of people equate Agile with Scrum, which is incorrect. Agile is about exactly what you said: empowering devs to get shit done. None of the extra “keep managers happy” crap that Scrum introduces is in any way covered by the Agile manifesto.

We use Agile at our company and let me tell you, it sucks. Maybe straight up scrum would be worse, but honestly agile is invasive and just feels like you’re being babysat and forcing people to give BS updates at standups because they’re afraid of sounding unproductive.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#258

Post by fwip »

ta_1138 wrote: post #60
Stratoscope wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sprints! When I started at my current job, I naively looked at the bugs and tasks assigned to me, and started picking and fixing the highest priority tickets. Then I was informed, "Oh no, that's not how we do things here. Don't look at the priority, just work on what is assigned to you in the current sprint." I had never heard of sprints before. More recently, I had a conversation with my manager and asked, "Do w…

That's normal nowadays, even in the most ridiculous of situations. I once found that a system was getting a little expensive. As, AWS was billing us a million a month expensive. I figured this out, and came up with a plan that would cut it down to 80 thousand by spending 4 days: You know, a mild, 11 million a year of savings. Management insisted that the work had to go through scheduling, and intake, a process that w…

The manager probably can't take the credit for saving 10 million dollars if they don't put it through the system.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#259

Post by marcosdumay »

quartesixte wrote: post #207
Aeolun wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be explicitly stated, but I’ve never had a scrum meeting without all managers and project managers. They also tend to make the stand-ups one hour long.

As someone who works in a hard-tech startup, where daily standups in production manufacturing teams are part of the daily culture. 1) Anything longer than 15 minutes is insane 2) What do you even talk about for an hour? 3) Why do you even do standups for design work? What "blockers" could you possibly have that require daily, 15 minute tagups with the entire crew?

On #2, nothing. People stay an hour trying to look busy because somebody on the meeting expect them to be busy and the meeting to be important. So they spend an hour talking about nothing.

On #3, blockers exist more on design than on operation. But the idea of a daily meeting to solve blockers is crazy-stupid. Imagine if operations did this, every time somebody's work get a wrong input, you'd stop their line until the next morning. That's why operations dailies aren't about blockers, and instead about information sharing. But design work doesn't have separate teams that need to share information, so they invent a bullshit reason to still have the meeting.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#260

Post by etiam »

Trasmatta wrote: post #21

I'm at a weird point in my career where every development process stresses me out, no matter what. Guess that's burnout.

Sorry to hear that, and please have it attended to sooner rather than later. The recovery times can be worlds apart depending on how far burnout is allowed to progress.

I imagine it's still not that every development process stresses you out equally though, so it's still worthwhile considering how much stress the environment adds and why.

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