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Why Scrum is stressing you out

rethinkingsoftware.substack.com

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Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#401

Post by nicbou »

booleandilemma wrote: post #20

We have a woman at my company whose job is to update Jira ticket statuses. Instead of allowing the developers to update the statuses themselves, she will often prematurely update statuses from "In Development" to "Ready for QA" before any code is merged. Or she'll update a ticket that isn't yet being worked on to "In Development". It repeatedly causes a lot of confusion. I think she feels the need to be so hands on w…

I used to have that job!

My actual job was to make sure the tickets were clear, relevant and ready to work on (as opposed to a stream-of-consciousness wishlist from managers). I gathered requirements, represented the devs in planning meetings, cleared their hurdles and QA'd their work. I was basically a prep cook for the devs.

I think it was a useful role.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#402

Post by rightbyte »

yqtjnvou wrote: post #214

Scrum is useless. it's just another method of demanding results. Where there isn't anything to tell, you shouldn't be forced to do so. All this imbecility does is to create competition, and weed out the ones that don't comply. I've worked in teams where we were forced to have something to report even when nothing was to report. This made the team create "things" to match their daily scrums, because the truth might ge…

> Those that actually do work, have nothing to say in these scrums. It's a fact.

There is something fundamental here.

Competent programmers make it look like they slack off and what they do is easy.

The ones who create problems that in practice only they can fix and seem blocked all the time are the ones that seem productive in an agile environment.

I guess that is the reason standups evolve into some sort of status update, finger pointing and bragging contest.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#403

Post by rightbyte »

pragma_x wrote: post #345

When managing a project scrum I stick to a few things that have worked well for me. - Make it clear that the name "sprint" is a bad one. This is marathon. Encourage maintaining a steady pace and do not become a party to burn-out. - Use Agile pointing methodology by the book. - Standups are for communicating wins and blockers; your overall general status is not useful to the rest of the team and makes the standup go l…

> the name "sprint" is a bad one. This is marathon.

'Marathon' is also as bad. It implies running fast to the point of almost puking over an extended period of time for the glory of it.

How about 'cycle', or 'trip' if we have to use distance traveled methaphors?

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#404

Post by randomdata »

nottorp wrote: post #373
randomdata wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously? Yes. Communism's key attributes are that it is classless, stateless, and moneyless. > Who takes all the resources and allocates them "according to each person's need" then? We'd need to know more about how post-scarcity is achieved in order to answer that question. Star Trek says the replicator is responsible, although that seems unlikely outside of the imagined Star Trek universe. Based on what we can s…

> what is oft referred to as primitive communism? Did communist utopians realize it doesn't work so now they're adding "post scarcity" to it to make it work? Will they add "AI" next? Edit: "Based on what we can see today, I'd guess robots." Oh yea, "AI" is next.

> Did communist utopians realize it doesn't work so now they're adding "post scarcity" to it to make it work?

Did TV fanatics realize that Star Trek doesn't work? What does this even mean? Communism isn't something real, it is a work of science fiction that details an imagined world after post-scarcity. Always has been, probably always will be.

Hell, even if we actually do reach post-scarcity some day, the chances of going the communism route are about as likely as us going the Star Trek route. Reality has a way of turning out quite different to what you envision. There is effectively no chance of communism becoming more than science fiction.

Is that what you mean by "doesn't work"? That it will never be more than science fiction? In the same way aliens, time travel, etc. "don't work"? Fair, I suppose, but that makes your communism obsession rather bizarre.

> "Based on what we can see today, I'd guess robots." Oh yea, "AI" is next.

How do you foresee AI being useful? Robotics is by and large how we've achieved post-scarcity in food production. If we were to achieve full-on post-scarcity, chances are we would do so by finding additional robot applications. We're not that creative as species. But who knows.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#405

Post by jiggawatts »

seadan83 wrote: post #383
bluGill wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business has a need for a regular status update from everyone. You can call it a standup or not. You can call it not agile, but in the end the business has needs and you cannot ignore those needs. The business needs to know when something will be done as they need to make promises to customers. The business also needs to know when things will be done as that is a proxy for cost - they need to make sure they are n…

Agile is meant to be a collaborative process with a user or customer to discover the truly desired objective. Baked into agile is the notion of changing courses. A business that wants a deliverable by a certain date wants a contract - not Agile. How can a route be predictable look with a process that explicitly seeks to regularly change course. We could also get into the theory of whether it is actually possible to s…

Software with business utility is never "finished" unless the business is finished.

Trying to estimate when software is finished is tantamount to asking when the last light will be turned off forever in the warehouse.

I keep trying to tell PMs that around the release date is when developers are the most busy, including afterwards. It's not some magic deadline after which developers are no longer needed.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#406

Post by randomdata »

nicbou wrote: post #401
booleandilemma wrote: post #20

We have a woman at my company whose job is to update Jira ticket statuses. Instead of allowing the developers to update the statuses themselves, she will often prematurely update statuses from "In Development" to "Ready for QA" before any code is merged. Or she'll update a ticket that isn't yet being worked on to "In Development". It repeatedly causes a lot of confusion. I think she feels the need to be so hands on w…

I used to have that job! My actual job was to make sure the tickets were clear, relevant and ready to work on (as opposed to a stream-of-consciousness wishlist from managers). I gathered requirements, represented the devs in planning meetings, cleared their hurdles and QA'd their work. I was basically a prep cook for the devs. I think it was a useful role.

I work with someone who has that job. The stream of consciousness is much preferable. I need to know the big picture, not some distilled set of requirements. Give requirements and I will spend half my time trying to "reverse engineer" the big picture from them, which is a big waste. And an even bigger waste if I get it wrong. Not sure why our industry is so obsessed with obscuring information.

Although I appreciate having someone to move boxes around for me. I cry a little every time I have to go near that horrid UX.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#407

Post by laylower »

I'm not a engineer but I can't believe engineers took the scrum/agile workstyle and adopted it like that. Why didn't they vote with their feet?

It's almost inhumane; sprints are those 10-20 seconds you run in a 100m 200m dash. Marathon is how you run faster. So, forcing people to do repeated sprints is for me, bad for your health, without exaggerating.

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#408

Post by high_na_euv »

laylower wrote: post #407

I'm not a engineer but I can't believe engineers took the scrum/agile workstyle and adopted it like that. Why didn't they vote with their feet? It's almost inhumane; sprints are those 10-20 seconds you run in a 100m 200m dash. Marathon is how you run faster. So, forcing people to do repeated sprints is for me, bad for your health, without exaggerating.

Scrum sprint is not running sprint

Lets not be ridiculous

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#409

Post by bamboozled »

Aeolun wrote: post #93
bamboozled wrote: post #70

What I dislike about SCRUM specifically is that if you're having a rough week at home, recovering from illness or you just have things to do outside of work, you can't really just have an easy week and make up for it later on. It's a kind of constant grind and we always have a way of "filling up" our sprint. If we don't meet our target, it always feels like a fail. I know it shouldn't feel like that but it's human na…

I just completely ignore sprints, or sprint/standup meetings. Somehow it works well enough that nobody has called me out on it yet. If they all want to waste 2 hours a day, more power to them.

I just find American corporate culture to be 90% about participation, not really results, but being there, being a "team player" and being really nice to everyone. Not necessarily bad things, but compared to Australian work culture (for example), America is really about "the teaaarrrmm".

Re: Why Scrum is stressing you out

#410

Post by nottorp »

randomdata wrote: post #404
nottorp wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what is oft referred to as primitive communism? Did communist utopians realize it doesn't work so now they're adding "post scarcity" to it to make it work? Will they add "AI" next? Edit: "Based on what we can see today, I'd guess robots." Oh yea, "AI" is next.

> Did communist utopians realize it doesn't work so now they're adding "post scarcity" to it to make it work? Did TV fanatics realize that Star Trek doesn't work? What does this even mean? Communism isn't something real, it is a work of science fiction that details an imagined world after post-scarcity. Always has been, probably always will be. Hell, even if we actually do reach post-scarcity some day, the chances of…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/cuba-said-to-reduce-bre...

I suppose in your modern communism they'll blame the "AI".

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