Kanban is the best middle ground IMO. I agree sprints are a distraction. The planning and ceremonies alone sap time. Sprints are really just a form of pressure. In my experience the stories estimating is not accurate enough to set up a predictable sprint, and the inevitable deviation from the plan just creates additional work to audit and adjust, along with a sense of failure around what has often been a productive 2 weeks.
I don’t believe in sprints
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Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#12Are sprints bullshit? Maybe some of them. But for teams to be effective, you need communication, knowledge sharing and some form of tracking progress. A good manager facilitates these items. A bad manager just throws tickets on a Kanban board.
Sure, if you have a team that can do all the above without sprints, that's great. But I bet they have some other method or social structure that makes team management effective. Most software teams do not have that without some type of formalized structure, especially when new devs rotate into the team.
So, I say stop criticizing the concept of a sprint and start holding your manager accountable for proper communication, effective knowledge sharing and realistic issue tracking. You wouldn't accept crap code, don't accept crap management. Do this and your sprints will add value (and the meeting will be shorter too!).
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#13Personally, I never liked agile. I like to get a description of a problem. Prototype. Take that to that customer and ask for feedback. Iterate. QA. QA. QA. Release. Thing is, much like governments, these models all fall short because people aren’t great. I think that if agile isn’t working for a team they should try another method, and if agile does work for a team that’s fantastic. People, imho, shouldn’t blindly follow a methodology in religious fashion. They should try different stuff until something works for them.
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#14Worked in many teams and company sizes. I prefer Kanban to scrum hands down. My hot take is that Sprints are a good tool for an incompetent manager who cannot exert pressure or plan work without a fixed structure.
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#15(side note: there are no crappy teams, only crappy managers) is patently false unless the manager also has the power to add/remove people from their team or fire people.
lol, there are crappy companies, crappy business models and crappy industries - any of these can make it hard or impossible to attract non-crappy staff/teams...
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#16Me neither. Unfortunately my boss does, though.
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#17I wonder how in the author's world teams communicate? How do they communicate progress with other groups (potentially other teams they need to synchronise with for the release of features), how do they communicate with managers (ah those pesky managers, always wanting to know when a feature will be ready), how do they communicate with customers (ah those pesky customers. always wanting to know when a feature will be ready)? “Good teams don’t need sprints to get good work done.” No, and that's not the idea behind sprints and backlogs and tickets. It is primarily about communication.
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#18Kanban is the best middle ground IMO. I agree sprints are a distraction. The planning and ceremonies alone sap time. Sprints are really just a form of pressure. In my experience the stories estimating is not accurate enough to set up a predictable sprint, and the inevitable deviation from the plan just creates additional work to audit and adjust, along with a sense of failure around what has often been a productive 2…
In a job a long time ago there was a brogrammer in the team, always estimating absurdly short times because he was so good and fast (he wasn't bad, but he was 2-3x slower than he himself estimated). So I had picked up the habit of estimating 5x longer on tasks, to balance him out.
Also all the sprint planning and retrospective took basically 30% of our time.
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#19Even just the language we use to describe it all is depressing isn't it? 'Sprint', 'tickets', etc.
Re: I don’t believe in sprints
#20> Good teams don’t need sprints to get good work done.
I agree. Most teams are mediocre though. A lot of processes have the goal to limit risks due to bad teams.