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Why I'm done with Scrum

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Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#151

Post by Evbn »

gaius wrote: post #118
martincmartin wrote: post #63

I've done a bunch of reading about Scrum. If you read between the lines, you realize that Scrum was created and popularized by consultants who go into dysfunctional teams/organizations, and tries to fix the worse problems. For example, the idea of a sprint is for a team to be able to work for at least a couple weeks on a single thing, without people being asked to work on other "small" projects, or without the entire…

Scrum is by and for management, not developers. Want your devs in at 9am? No problem, hold the standup then. Want to easily replace your dev team with an outsourced one? No problem, a Scrum team is a black box as far as the rest of the organization is concerned, one with a well-documented interface. Etc, etc. Ir's insidious because it tricks devs into thinking it's for them.

Um, one of the first rules of scrum is that management is not invited to the Standup. Scrum is a process for a team to communicate effectively with each other and their customers.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#152

Post by Evbn »

debacle wrote: post #30
brazzy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cowboy programmer bullshit., the kind of thing mediocre but cocky programmers tell themselves to justify primadonna behaviour "having nothing and good developers you trust" is either a recipe for disaster, or a short prelude to those good developers coming up with a minimal ad hoc process that fits the project and most likely is remarkably similar to one established Agile methodology or another.

I completely disagree [1]. There's a difference between a cowboy programmer and a programmer that can go more than a day or two without checking in with his superior. In my personal opinion, based on the level of intelligence required to do good programming, the best programmers are self-managing. As a corollary to that, it's too expensive to hire development managers (in the traditional "management" sense) that can…

In Scrum, superiors check in once per sprint at the end of one / beginning of next, unless they want to change priorities (not plans, priorities) for the team and cancel previously requestd delverables.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#153

Post by Evbn »

tosh wrote: post #65
manmal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why Scrum is not agile? You are the first I read claiming this.

Great question. I might have a harsh tone in my previous comment but I've got really frustrated with scrum (or implementations of it) over the last few years. Scrum in my eyes is a process and from what I've seen it makes teams very process oriented. The whole idea of scrum master certification and the success it had in enterprise adoption might have something to do with that. It incentivises teams (at least all the…

Certification is a gimmick. Scrum guidebooks don't say you need to get certified. You can buy a degree in Kanban too if you want. Is programming worthless because Java certification exists?

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#154

Post by Evbn »

programminggeek wrote: post #23
vannevar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrum is focused almost exclusively on delivery. Every sprint, you should be delivering working features. It's not that hard: every sprint, you commit to a set of stories to finish before the next sprint. Every day you meet briefly to tell everyone how you're progressing and to air out any impediments. That's about it. To me, scrum is stripping process down to the bare minimum you need to be effective.

Haha, that is only true for a certain type of person. For other people Scrum becomes about "the rules" and if you break one of the rules, you're doing it wrong, even if that might be the best decision at the time. Agile is a philosophy, Scrum is meant to be more of a framework to implement that philosophy, but many people treat it as a set of rules on how to do things, which tends to violate the philosophy of Agile p…

In that regard, how is scrum different from anything ever? Anyone can be process obsessed in any system. And, dare I say it, giving a process to Asperger, socially tone-deaf, shoe-staring programmers may help them contribute more effectively to a larger organization.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#155

Post by Evbn »

MartinCron wrote: post #20
barrkel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's fantastic when you're on a tight schedule! Instead of running fast all the time, you just sprint, then sprint, then sprint, etc! Works like magic. No one burns out at all.

I don't know if you meant that in a sarcastic way, but this does touch on a pet peeve of mine with Scrum, the word "sprint" is, by definition, not a sustainable pace.

You rest, reflect, and recompose between sprints.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#156

Post by Evbn »

barrkel wrote: post #49
vannevar wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. You sprint, then you take time to review and reflect on what you've done. Then you take time to plan what you're going to do next. Then you sprint again.

IME the "review, reflect and plan" is a one-hour meeting on a Friday, every two or three weeks.

Change it to two days. When do you squeeze in your retrospective? Your presentation of the deliverable to stakholders? Negotiating next sprint commitments? Researching before you do estimation?

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#157

Post by adrianhoward »

YZF wrote: post #147
adrianhoward wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly not the intent behind Scrum though. The intent behind Scrum is to let the team within the sprint be pretty much completely free to implement whatever process they like to deliver the sprint goal. It's whole focus is to remove management interference from the main body of work the team does. PO figures out what needs doing. Team figures out the best way of doing it. Scrum provides a framework for acco…

I know that. The historical motivator is the 1986 paper, "The new new product development game". I think the difference in what happens in Scrum is that the team gets further isolated from an organization through the ScrumMaster and Product Owner and therefore has less ability to influence and more process imposed (the various invariable rituals of Scrum and more). The teams are now viewed as units of production, sti…

Agreed. That sort of setup does suck. But then again that sort of team isn't really doing Scrum (they're certainly ignoring the way the roles should work, and they're certainly not using the sprint retrospective to improve).

This isn't Agile sucking, or Scrum sucking. This is folks not doing Scrum sucking.

The issues that caused the OP to move from Scrum to a Lean approach - I can go with most of those (indeed they match my observations of some other transitions)... but the delivery one doesn't ring true in my experience. I've seen a bunch of Scrum teams with a laser like focus on delivery.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#158

Post by adrianhoward »

josephlord wrote: post #142
adrianhoward wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know - it does come across as the one-true-scotsman argument at times. Disclaimer: I'm a fan of agile. I even seem to be turning into one of those evil consultant people in my old age (but only just recently - and I still code :-) I'd urge agile sceptics to put aside some of the crap they see in the real world. Go take a look at the original sources (e.g. both of Beck's books on XP are fun reads - and short :-). Ta…

16 pages is plenty to define a onerous heavy process. I could define an onerous process in one page if I wanted. I don't feel sufficiently informed to judge wether it is onerous in theory or practice but weighing the description is the wrong test.

I'm sorry - I could have been clearer. The point I was trying to make was that the process of reading to determine whether it is a heavy weight process is not an onerous one.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#159

Post by brazzy »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #69
brazzy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cowboy programmer bullshit., the kind of thing mediocre but cocky programmers tell themselves to justify primadonna behaviour "having nothing and good developers you trust" is either a recipe for disaster, or a short prelude to those good developers coming up with a minimal ad hoc process that fits the project and most likely is remarkably similar to one established Agile methodology or another.

Here is another perfect examplee of what's wrong with SCRUM, it creates zealots. When someone starts talking about a need to give good, self-disciplined devs a little freedom instead of micromanaging them to death the scrum zombies start shouting about "cowboy programmers". When someone starts talking about long-term or strategic planning they start screaming about "waterfall". The truth is that there is a lot of evi…

You obviously have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about. Please actually do some reading about what SCRUM is before you spread this kind of FUD.

Re: Why I'm done with Scrum

#160

Post by brazzy »

eevilspock wrote: post #84
zwieback wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good developers+zero formal process only works to a certain scale, though. I think that's where scrum might have a place, just enough process to keep things from going off the rails when the team is too big to self-organize over a long period of time. Agree about the danger of zealotry though. Also, the vocabulary is just so ridiculous - I have to mentally think "black dog grooming" when I say "backlog grooming" just…

It also depends on the nature of the work. Is it more mechanical, a more-or-less straightforward implementation of a spec? Or does it require real creativity, invention, non-linear thinking? Anyone who truly understands the creative process knows you have to give it freedom. Scrum might have valuable in big hierarchical companies or when there are many average-talent programmers, but there's no way I'd foist it on a…

Scrum is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you apparently think it is. Is is ALL ABOUT giving the developers freedom and and inteded exactly for projects that require creativity and don't have a spect to implement straightforwardly.
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