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Scrum is the new waterfall

adambourg.com

21–30 of 183 posts

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#21
Whats wrong with waterfall? Surely mis-using waterfall was the culprit. I'm guessing same goes for Scrum. I've never followed true scrum so my opinion might be jaded however the devil generally lies in the implementation of the process.

You cannot fit the same tire on a truck and a kid's tricycle, same way you cannot fit the same process for all development cycle. If you team needs clear direction and everything well defined (written in stone), follow waterfall. If your team needs formal process but can do some things on their own (say a team filled with new hires and one lone experienced dev), scrum might not be so bad. Kanbaan is good when everyone knows what they're doing and you really just want to know which stages do you need to focus more on.

You're best bet is probably to try all three and whatever else exists, mix and match until you can successfully deliver your products without a whole lotta overhead and then keep tweaking the process when conditions change (new hires, folks leaving, change in goals/features).

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#22
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%…

You only hear about the people struggling with agile because the people not struggling are busy working on stuff.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#23

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…

At the university where I am, we were discussing today in one compsci class how agile is something that only works if you don’t care about consistent quality and only care about always having the newest, shiniest, greatest.

And how, if you are working on software for ESA, or working for one of the largest internet retailers, or if you’re writing a control software for railway switches, waterfall is the only possible option.

Even if the target is moving, agile is never able to provide quality.

Some of my professors were hired before by large internet retailers to spend weeks trying to understand even their business processes, as the retailer had built their infrastructure without oversight and every employee was working on whatever they wanted.

Just this "trying to understand what even is going on" helped them improve their processes and greatly increase their profit margin, as they were able to make many things more efficient with rethinking and rewriting.

EDIT: I’ll add my definition of quality here: Your software is able to interact with third parties without them ever having to rewrite their software, your software can run for decades without or with little maintenance, and your software is well documented. In my opinion, Agile is very ill suited for these requirements. One example is the Internet of Things, where you can be sure no one is ever going to update their smart washing machine

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#25
I don't understand why this is on the top of Hacker News. It seems to be one person's opinions and experiences about complex issues that face hundreds of thousands of engineers in thousands of companies across the world.

Nothing in the article makes me trust this persons perspective over any other. It's not thoroughly investigated with metrics over many case studies. There's no empirical evidence to back up his assertions. He doesn't have a reputation for other work that would make me trust his informed opinion over any others.

There seems to be hundreds of articles touting every possible side of this issue, why did this one strike a chord?

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#26
Scrum at its core is about setting your team up to LEARN and improve by introducing feedback cycles.

That's it.

If your team learns after one cycle that they are more effective without one of the common ceremonies, then your team should drop it.

The problem that Adam is observing is not with Scrum itself - it's that too many miseducated managers lose sight of the point and are obsessing over the wrong details.

Source: I have been on extremely successful Scrum teams, I have seen Scrum done properly dramatically transform "stale" teams, and I have trained with Jeff Sutherland, one of Scrum's founders.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#27
post #7

The fatal flaw of any process - scrum, kanban, waterfall, etc, is when engineering teams try to use them as a replacement for communication rather than as a communication aide.

Yep. Process is compensation for lack of talent, which may sound cruel or arrogant but it's not. If you're great, you can self direct, design, and implement what needs to happen in your project with no help or management at all.

It's totally okay not to be great, but when you're not great you need help, and help comes in the form of management, and management needs a way to set and manage expectations. Agile is one way, waterfall is another.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#28

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.

But if you have a few people develop and ship a product, what's everyone else going to do besides look stupid?

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#29
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. "Scrum is the new waterfall" is true in this case in that both have been built as total strawmen. Scrum says nothing about unit tests, nor does it require sticking to the commitment (although it used to) > I dont think they had a very good explanatory service The most recent documentation on "Core" scrum is very simple and easy to parse.

Yup, this guy sets up a total strawman which doesn't accurately describe how I've seen Scrum run at two major telecom software companies. We change mid-sprint (when we need to), we don't have non-programmers running scrums or writing user stories and if you don't complete a story in a sprint then you roll it over to the next one. If you have deadlines and contractual commitments to meet his suggestion of "use Kanban"…

This isn't a straw man. This is exactly how Scrum gets implemented when management is running the process and not the development team.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#30

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.

That seems like laissez-faire waterfall to me. The problem with the "hard ship date" is that it usually comes with a set of expectations for what is ready on that date: If you need software X on July 1, what happens when software Y becomes more necessary on April 15?
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