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How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

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Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#11

Post by madhadron »

monksy wrote: post #9
jVinc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no mention of permission in scrum. There is no event where you discuss if people had permission to do what they did. You might be using scrum in an organisation that is otherwise overly restrictive or has build it's own processes around how to seek permission prior to implementation but that has nothing to do with scrum.

What did you do yesterday? (Also their next question is somewhere arround why didn't you finish it) What are you doing today? (That sounds like scope creep) Are there any blockers? (Let me give you my unsolicited advice)

If you're in a toxic team, maybe. I have found it to be the minimal useful script for daily updates because it 1) quickly updates the team on changes, 2) quickly heads off duplicated work and misunderstandings, and 3) provides a fast channel to get someone help.

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#12

Post by madhadron »

Poor scrum. It gets so maligned. If you have a high functioning, well gelled team with well developed communication habits and rituals, you don't need scrum. But, guess what, those are few and far between, and scrum is an excellent starting point.

Whenever I see a complaint it's usually because someone involved has violated some part of scrum. It's run by the developers. They set what they're planning to work on. No one else should be talking in scrum meetings, and certainly not making decisions based on scrum meetings. It's totally fair to evict everyone else.

Take the hard problems thing. You can tackle hard problems. Saying, "I'm going to try working out this prototype idea and do a literature review of this topic" is perfectly reasonable as a plan for a week or two.

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#13

Post by mempko »

It's a shame that the consultants took scrum and destroyed it. Here is the truth about scrum. Scrum is a radical framework to get rid of management and therefore micromanagement. Scrum is meant to empower creators by destroying all obstacles that get in the way of creating great work together. Here is a great source to start. http://scrumbook.org/

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#14

Post by gay4pay »

Show and tell is pretty fucking gay, and that's why scrum is dogshit. Just tell me what to do, and I'll fucking do it.

When you trot me out like a show pony, or force me to share, like this is group therapy or something, it ruins my day.

Every fucking day.

The emotional labor of collecting my thoughts for a 15 minute public speaking engagement, particularly on days, when the project was planned too poorly for me to have anything worth sharing for days, or even weeks on end, means that I hate myself for the lies and theater and hoops I must jump through, simply to seem like a good sport.

Sorry, but you just have to portion out work better, which means actually having a clue about what you're going to try and do before you do it.

Most teams and projects are not under the impression that there is blue sky investigation required to explore certain subject matter and areas of interest. Feature factory assembly lines with cookie cutter operations get impatient, when confronted with stalls due to clueless planning. Whoops!

So, whatever the fuck. Who cares. Stick your hand up my ass so that I parrot buzzwords like a good little puppet, and see what you get for it. Somehow, most teams lack the ability to write down what they want. You get these one-liner task assignments: do the thing. And then expect no blockage or derailments? Okay, have fun with that.

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#16

Post by adrianmsmith »

mempko wrote: post #13

It's a shame that the consultants took scrum and destroyed it. Here is the truth about scrum. Scrum is a radical framework to get rid of management and therefore micromanagement. Scrum is meant to empower creators by destroying all obstacles that get in the way of creating great work together. Here is a great source to start. http://scrumbook.org/

My opinion is it’s managers who get to decide what methodology gets used. It’s their job. If you don’t do what they say they can fire you.

So I don’t think any methodology which involves getting rid of management will be successful, or get widely implemented unaltered.

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#18

Post by Scarblac »

madhadron wrote: post #12

Poor scrum. It gets so maligned. If you have a high functioning, well gelled team with well developed communication habits and rituals, you don't need scrum. But, guess what, those are few and far between, and scrum is an excellent starting point. Whenever I see a complaint it's usually because someone involved has violated some part of scrum. It's run by the developers. They set what they're planning to work on. No…

Where I work, we can choose what we work on, as long as it's one of the backlog tickets the product owner wants done for the next release.

The way they are formulated means there is very little room for solving hard problems (of the type that could result in fifty tickets not being necessary anymore), let alone making prototypes for things if they aren't guaranteed to releasable results for any of the tickets.

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#19

Post by Scarblac »

mempko wrote: post #13

It's a shame that the consultants took scrum and destroyed it. Here is the truth about scrum. Scrum is a radical framework to get rid of management and therefore micromanagement. Scrum is meant to empower creators by destroying all obstacles that get in the way of creating great work together. Here is a great source to start. http://scrumbook.org/

In practice, without any consultants involved, the Scrum master is a manager, the Product Owner is a manager, _and_ I still have my regular manager.

Re: How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

#20

Post by Scarblac »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #17

Is it just me, or is it the case that in discussions about Scrum, most of the responses are “then you’re not doing it right”, “no true Scotsman”-style?

Yes, but then most organisations just do daily standups without any clear goal, use Jira and have two-weekly planning meetings and then say they're doing Scrum.
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