Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

stackoverflow.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 223 posts

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#141

Post by sergeykish »

danjac wrote: post #106
Areading314 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read his book, you'll see that he repeatedly drives the point home, that Scrum is not a set of pre-baked processes, but a philosophy around measurement, prioritizing, and continuous improvement. The cargo cult meetings and processes are more a product of the "Agile movement" that is championed by mediocre middle managers.

That's the problem though: any philosophy that cannot be implemented by a "mediocre middle manager" (i.e. most managers in most companies) is doomed to fail. And if it requires an "amazing" manager to succeed, the question is whether it's down to the philosophy or the manager.

But there are no managers in SCRUM. It is doomed to fail once methodology is thrown out and replaced with manager. I've been on SCRUM presentation in 2007. They explicitly stated - we help forming the team and go away.

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#143

Post by toomanybeersies »

fxtentacle wrote: post #52
js8 wrote: post #34

We use Scrum at work and I have to say, I am pretty annoyed by it. I think it is fundamentally rooted in the idea that ideal software development is just a continuous production of small improvements to the code. And from this come all its micromanagement failure modes (which there are plenty). I think in reality, SW development done right is nothing like that. It is highly discrete when it comes to output, because i…

I remember we had a discussion about 10x developers a while ago and how some developers are perceived as moody divas. My guess would be that the 10x-ers have are independent enough from any given employer that they can reject Scrum even if everyone else has to follow it. And later on, their ability to work on their own terms is what then makes them 10x more productive than the poor scrummers.

I definitely fit into the "moody diva 10x developer"

I've given up trying to estimate how long a task will take and more or less just pick an arbitrary (usually comfortably large) number of points.

The thing is, it isn't even about estimating the scope of work, which is often unknown until it's complete, especially if I'm battling technical debt. A given task might take me an afternoon on a good day, or half a week on a bad week. Case in point, I got more work done on Monday than all of last week. That's the joy of having ADHD I suppose.

At least my manager is very understanding, and recognises that on a macro scale I get a lot of high quality work done. I think that's the key to being a good manager, understanding that your subordinates have different working styles and managing them with that in mind. I'm sure there are "10x developers" out there who work in a more consistent manner, or benefit from more hands-on management than I do.

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#144

Post by danjac »

sergeykish wrote: post #141
danjac wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem though: any philosophy that cannot be implemented by a "mediocre middle manager" (i.e. most managers in most companies) is doomed to fail. And if it requires an "amazing" manager to succeed, the question is whether it's down to the philosophy or the manager.

But there are no managers in SCRUM. It is doomed to fail once methodology is thrown out and replaced with manager. I've been on SCRUM presentation in 2007. They explicitly stated - we help forming the team and go away.

> there are no managers in SCRUM

A philosophy that hinges around some ideal of how the world should be, rather than dealing with the world as it really is, often ends up being implemented as the exact opposite of that ideal. I can think of some historical parallels...

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#145

Post by tumetab1 »

jjav wrote: post #40
watwut wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Scrum leads to resignation for many people, because it takes away control out of individual and insists on everything being collective. So your personal options to improve or make decision becomes severely limited. Some people like it, because it allowed them to push themselves on the rest of the team. But people who dont thrive in such constant dominance conflict end up resentful and helpless.

That's an insightful concise description of "agile" experience. As an anecdote, I have an acquaintance who is a psychologist in silicon valley and he has mentioned he frequently works with patients suffering from mental health issues related to being subject to "agile" at work. I wish someone would do a proper study on this topic. Personally, agile hasn't driven me to depression but it has made me target roles that a…

I think UX people should evaluate the different development processes. UX people because they have the concept of that something tasks take more mental effort while other less, e.g. searching for a button within 100 buttons has a cognitive load than searching for a button within 10 buttons.

My guess is that SCRUM has a greater cognitive load than waterfall.

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#146

Post by sergeykish »

danjac wrote: post #144
sergeykish wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are no managers in SCRUM. It is doomed to fail once methodology is thrown out and replaced with manager. I've been on SCRUM presentation in 2007. They explicitly stated - we help forming the team and go away.

> there are no managers in SCRUM A philosophy that hinges around some ideal of how the world should be, rather than dealing with the world as it really is, often ends up being implemented as the exact opposite of that ideal. I can think of some historical parallels...

Just don't call it SCRUM.

Call it "fraud SCRUM because it sells so well" or "lipstick SCRUM so we look cool" or "didn't read SCRUM but we have meetings and sprints". SCRUM works, maybe not for everyone but this denies us a chance.

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#147

Post by znpy »

I work in systems engineering, automation, devops and that kind of stuff.

I've seen colleagues in development at other companies do this daily standups and all this scrum thing.

From the outside it really looks like somebody constantly asking "are you done yet?" And pressuring people into delivering. It really looks like something invented to serve companies and management more than developers.

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#149

Post by ricardobeat »

meheleventyone wrote: post #131
WalterBright wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of companies have tried to establish a skunkworks, but with "improvements". None have done particularly well. (The "improvements" were taking away the autonomy of the skunkworks.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunkworks_project

I've also seen it fail the other way where the Skunkworks becomes the preserve of "high achievers" not producing a lot that's useful. Almost every 'Office of the CTO' I've seen has suffered that failure mode. Lot's of things get built but none are more than fluffy experiments and there's no path to actually putting any of those things into production. Once in a while they'll be forced through and the production team…

Isn't that just a lack of clear goals? Skunkworks had extremely ambitious deliverables and was not a science lab, even though they helped develop a lot of new technology.

Re: Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong?

#150

Post by ricardobeat »

tragic wrote: post #125
js8 wrote: post #34

We use Scrum at work and I have to say, I am pretty annoyed by it. I think it is fundamentally rooted in the idea that ideal software development is just a continuous production of small improvements to the code. And from this come all its micromanagement failure modes (which there are plenty). I think in reality, SW development done right is nothing like that. It is highly discrete when it comes to output, because i…

> P.S. I am tired of the YADIW excuse. Let's have a nice honest discussion about how it can be fixed. If somebody complains that Scrum is bad because e.g. every day you have to update management at stand-up (as mentioned in TFA), but the Scrum Guide, every book ever written on scrum, the websites of the Scrum Alliance and scrum.org, and more or less every advocate of scrum great and small, states explicitly that this…

Despite what every book says, despite having three agile coaches run workshops with the team, despite this issue being specifically addressed with everyone involved, and being acknowledged as wrong, it still becomes the purpose of the standup.

No amount of "this is not the purpose of a standup" and "you're doing it wrong" can fix human nature. Management is mostly interested in progress and timelines, and will give unintentional (or not) feedback, even through body language, whenever a task is delayed or impacted in any way. They have some authority over team members' performance eval. Hence people will end up reporting to them no matter how hard you try. The only possible fix is to remove management or product from the standup, which is how it was originally supposed to be - but that seems unthinkable in the "agile at scale' format most companies have adopted today.

Post reply on HN