Scrum is the new waterfall • Hacker News Board

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#11

Post by badloginagain » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:31 PM UTC

I've been at a few studios, all expounding how they're "Agile! Scrum! Fast-Moving!" And I've seen true "agile" horror shows.

Stand-ups consisting of everyone either A) trying to prove they actually did work yesterday in as many words as possible or B) taking this as a chance to have a nice chat with everyone. Hour-long daily stand-ups are not agile.

The worst though was the planning meeting for next sprint, where no one had a #$%^ing clue what they needed to do, what the priority was, where the dependencies lay. A day every two weeks you dread.

I think the big take-away is not to do Agile for Agile's sake. Do it to solve a problem- if developers don't know what each-other is doing, there's solutions. Working on a product with changing requirements? Work in sprints to be able to respond to that. But don't do it because it's what all the cool kids are doing.

EDIT: The inverse is also true, people. It's not supposed to be a religion, you can pick and choose practices and processes to fit your requirements. Do what you need to do to achieve the goals you want to achieve.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#12

Post by calinet6 » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:31 PM UTC

Any system implemented without an understanding of how systems work, and how humans interact with them, will be painful.

We need systems thinking, not any one prescribed process.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#13

Post by mwhuber » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:32 PM UTC

cechner wrote: post #2

I don't really agree with this - Scrum isn't really easy to do but in many situations it is the simplest approach to take. If you need to monitor your progress in 'real' terms (i.e., whats actually completed) Scrum is pretty much the minimum ceremony you can get away with in my experience. If you don't need to do that, say if you don't have a deadline that you need to know you wont hit ASAP, then Scrum is likely not…

> It sounds like you dont really know what the purpose of scrum is.

Agreed. People lose sight of this being a "framework" far too often. Make it fit your needs and run with it.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#14

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:32 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #12

Any system implemented without an understanding of how systems work, and how humans interact with them, will be painful. We need systems thinking, not any one prescribed process.

> We need systems thinking, not any one prescribed process.

Problem is, its hard to get people doing systems thinking, especially about systems they are part of.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#15

Post by ubernostrum » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

cechner wrote: post #2

I don't really agree with this - Scrum isn't really easy to do but in many situations it is the simplest approach to take. If you need to monitor your progress in 'real' terms (i.e., whats actually completed) Scrum is pretty much the minimum ceremony you can get away with in my experience. If you don't need to do that, say if you don't have a deadline that you need to know you wont hit ASAP, then Scrum is likely not…

It sounds like you dont really know what the purpose of scrum is.

Unfortunately, every response to "we tried process/technique X and it failed" in this space is ultimately "you didn't understand it" or "you did it wrong".

So no true scrum would have...

No true Agile shop would have...

And where does that get us? It appears that the success rate of people understanding and implementing these things is very close to 0%. Maybe the problem is with the processes/techniques after all.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#16

Post by mmanfrin » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

Scrum works fine when it's just programmers. Scrum and Agile become shackles when management gets involved and sees it as a status-checkup for their top-down view. The latter scenario seems to be 90% of situations, unfortunately.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#17

Post by andy_ppp » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:42 PM UTC

The best project manager I ever worked with just wrote everyone's names on the board, asked what they were working on today, writing it on the board next to their name. You can imagine how the next day went; "So Andrew, how did X go yesterday, any blockers? Is it done? What are the issues, can we break this down further?"

It's all you need.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#18

Post by carsongross » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:44 PM UTC

It's amazing to me the lengths organizations will go to avoid the one thing that actually works: hiring a small team of really good developers, paying them a lot of money and giving them hard ship date.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#19

Post by theptip » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

cechner wrote: post #8

cechner wrote: post #2

I don't really agree with this - Scrum isn't really easy to do but in many situations it is the simplest approach to take. If you need to monitor your progress in 'real' terms (i.e., whats actually completed) Scrum is pretty much the minimum ceremony you can get away with in my experience. If you don't need to do that, say if you don't have a deadline that you need to know you wont hit ASAP, then Scrum is likely not…

edit: I just noticed they said 'sprint commitment', and that they should adhere to it even if it runs overtime. This is probably the most wrong part of the article - you get done what you can, and let it affect your velocity. It is this velocity that is the central indicator of how much you can realistically achieve

I read "adhere to the sprint commitment" as being an undesirable aspect of Scrum that the author was complaining about, not something that Scrum is lacking.

It's certainly one of the bad parts of Scrum as commonly interpreted; c.f. http://www.peterkretzman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Aski....

(That's why newer docs tend to substitute "commitment" with "forecast", to clarify the Manifesto author's intent).

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#20

Post by PythonicAlpha » Tue, Nov 10, 2015, 11:47 PM UTC

As I experienced Scrum in practice, it is said that people should be "empowered". In reality, something totally different is happening: People are not empowered, but the management just delegates the responsibilities for the project to the developers and lays back, assured that they just have to wait for the "agile fruits" to be reaped. They have done everything, they could do, now the "empowered" employees have to see ...

Those poor employees might feel "empowered", but in reality, they are "impoverished". They are now responsible for the project, but often without amble resources needed. For example, when they need additional hardware or rooms or .... they are not empowered to get it. They are still beggars. Instead, they are empowered to work longer hours to reach the project goals they have set themselves. Why did they such a stupid thing? Because they wanted to look bright or because of group pressure or because they want a raise ...

And after they set their goals themselves, they are on their own.

This is not "empowerment", it is not about people -- it is just a good excuse for the management to get rid of the responsibilities and to "motivate" people to work longer hours. It is the newest "silver bullet" process of a project management that already lost control.