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

Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

amazingcto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 319 posts

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#281

Post by the_other »

endymi0n wrote: post #256
xondono wrote: post #9

To this day I still don’t understand how one can read the agile manifesto and somehow get to scrum. The whole thing is about processes, and tools (jira)… the complete opposite. The reason everyone ends up doing waterfall is that it’s not the devs who you need to convince when selling agility, is the chain of command. Being agile means having no long term plan. If the C-suite can’t handle that, you’ll never be agile.

Fully agree, agile is fine. The real problem is that Scrum is not agile at all: Scrum is a fat "process" that enforces "following a plan" (regular, rigid meeting structure), "creating comprehensive documentation" (user stories, specs, mocks, task board) and "contract negotiation" (estimation meetings, planning poker). In that way, it's the exact opposite of the original agile Manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/ The…

> The real problem is that Scrum is not agile at all: Scrum is a fat "process" that enforces "following a plan" (regular, rigid meeting structure), "creating comprehensive documentation" (user stories, specs, mocks, task board) and "contract negotiation" (estimation meetings, planning poker). In that way, it's the exact opposite of the original agile Manifesto:

None of those things are Scrum.

Scrum talks about defining bits of work to do on your product, but doesn’t mention User Stories. (But really, what’s the beef with User Stories? They’re short descriptions of what you hope to achieve! You gotta make some kind of plan sometime or you have no cohesion. If you don’t like the formality of User Stories, drop ‘em).

The meeting structures are not defined by Scrum. The intent and topics are defined, but the structure (apart from vague suggestions for rhythm and timing). They only exist on a cadence so you can predict some parts of the system (like ensuring the client turns up to see the work done). You can change most of the details.

Scrum doesn’t define any planning or estimation practice, it simply recommends you use some system so that the right people are in sync. You have to know if part A takes an order of magnitude longer to make than part B, so that they can hooked up properly.

Specs? Mocks? Task board? None of that is Scrum.

Scrum has two lists: the backlog, and the sprint backlog. The former grows as you learn what to make; the latter comes into being at the start of a sprint and disappears at the end. If you must put it in swim-lanes, that’s your loss. Don’t blame Scrum.

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#282

Post by cpeterso »

zogomoox wrote: post #6

A version of this is Scaled Agile (SAFe) which somehow manages to combine the worst of both worlds. If you see your organization preparing to go SAFe, run!

For a taste of SAFe, here's a 2018 GDC talk about Bungie using SAFe and "big room planning" to develop Destiny 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndPyhgorOKY

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#283

Post by black_13 »

watwut wrote: post #264
xondono wrote: post #9

To this day I still don’t understand how one can read the agile manifesto and somehow get to scrum. The whole thing is about processes, and tools (jira)… the complete opposite. The reason everyone ends up doing waterfall is that it’s not the devs who you need to convince when selling agility, is the chain of command. Being agile means having no long term plan. If the C-suite can’t handle that, you’ll never be agile.

> The reason everyone ends up doing waterfall is that it’s not the devs who you need to convince when selling agility Nah, agile is pushed from top to bottom, whether developers want OT or not. > Being agile means having no long term plan. If the C-suite can’t handle that, you’ll never be agile. While the devs are mostly OK with no plan, they do tend to want some planning once it is completely absent. What I see now…

Yeah right on the „no plan“ what c-suite does love is having no plan .

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#285

Post by msoad »

dragonwriter wrote: post #277
xondono wrote: post #9

To this day I still don’t understand how one can read the agile manifesto and somehow get to scrum. The whole thing is about processes, and tools (jira)… the complete opposite. The reason everyone ends up doing waterfall is that it’s not the devs who you need to convince when selling agility, is the chain of command. Being agile means having no long term plan. If the C-suite can’t handle that, you’ll never be agile.

> To this day I still don’t understand how one can read the agile manifesto and somehow get to scrum. You don't. I mean, literally, the relationship is inverted: Scrum predates Agile; the creators of the former later went on to contribute to the Agile Manifesto. > Being agile means having no long term plan No, it doesn't.

> No, it doesn't.

More like ignoring long term plans when you see something good is in front of you that wasn't planned. Think Slack team working on the video game an noticing their chat app is great...

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#286

Post by namdnay »

CoolestBeans wrote: post #280
rawgabbit wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> "Being agile means having no long term plan." I believe the angst against agile is it doesn't have a definitive viewpoint but is a reaction against what it sees as the evils of waterfall. Without definite processes, we get scrum. From my viewpoint, the issue is that scrum has a flawed understanding of Toyota Kaizen which it based itself on. Yes, in a Toyota factory, team members are expected to be able to perform…

The conservative Toyota you're describing is the Toyota that exists today, not the one that developed the Toyota Production System in the first place. Maybe they weren't bleeding edge but their engines had fuel injection, variable valve timing, and were computer controlled. Meanwhile the American automakers' idea of "futuristic" was putting LCD screens in the dash and making the cars talk when you left the door open.…

> Its really in the 2000s where Toyota switches to an "only conservative cars" business model when the Toyota developed sports cars disappear, engines start staying mostly the same, and generations get longer

And then 2020s Toyota came out with the GR Yaris, as if to prove that every rule has an exception :)

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#287

Post by vjust »

For a business stakeholder to understand, and clearly state business requirements, roadmaps to IT. That's a big ask in many organizations, in some cases where the business is evolving in response to customers/economy/random changes (pandemic for example), and given the average business stakeholder who's probably just trying to get thru some crises etc. As I type this, it makes me realize what a shit-show it is, and justifiably so - i.e. welcome to real life. Its messy in its natural state, because you don't control your customer, can't dictate to your customer or the economy or anyone outside your company for that matter - that's almost an invariant.. and is legit the dog that should wag the tail.

One thought that comes up is messy is ideally suited for agile, maybe if everyone pulls together , i.e. sees things the same way (without things being rammed down ). I've had an experience recently when I emerged from the mess, switched jobs, and went into a much more 'orderly' (read large/glacial) organization, I realized how effective messy agile is : No scrum masters, almost no managers, your Kanban and sprint board is the only work record (plus confluence), No word documents, absolutely no PPTs. It just worked .. I did hate some parts when I was in it but those were some social aspects. Taken by itself we shipped, as a flat team, and everyone knew everything, we were agile. This was what it took to ship. In those uncomfortable 18 months, I'd made the transition from waterfall to agile.

Work items have to be brutally meaningful and direct.. self-organized, without any of "lets do an AI project or neat dashboard". So you need capable business leadership, and capable tech leadership - both of whom should be able to cut thru jargon, frameworks, bleeding edge tech toys etc.. and just set priorities. The engineering team executes on those in a self organized way.

As for scrum, safe-agile - if it has a certification for it, that's self serving with some vested interest, causing much overhead, you either need technical engineering people or product owners.. otherwise it just leads to org bloat.

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#288

Post by softwarebeware »

CoolestBeans wrote: post #280
rawgabbit wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> "Being agile means having no long term plan." I believe the angst against agile is it doesn't have a definitive viewpoint but is a reaction against what it sees as the evils of waterfall. Without definite processes, we get scrum. From my viewpoint, the issue is that scrum has a flawed understanding of Toyota Kaizen which it based itself on. Yes, in a Toyota factory, team members are expected to be able to perform…

The conservative Toyota you're describing is the Toyota that exists today, not the one that developed the Toyota Production System in the first place. Maybe they weren't bleeding edge but their engines had fuel injection, variable valve timing, and were computer controlled. Meanwhile the American automakers' idea of "futuristic" was putting LCD screens in the dash and making the cars talk when you left the door open.…

Yeah it seems like they moved all the good stuff over to TRD and switched to "boring cars only" mode in the '00s

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#289

Post by dragonwriter »

msoad wrote: post #285
dragonwriter wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To this day I still don’t understand how one can read the agile manifesto and somehow get to scrum. You don't. I mean, literally, the relationship is inverted: Scrum predates Agile; the creators of the former later went on to contribute to the Agile Manifesto. > Being agile means having no long term plan No, it doesn't.

> No, it doesn't. More like ignoring long term plans when you see something good is in front of you that wasn't planned. Think Slack team working on the video game an noticing their chat app is great...

> More like ignoring long term plans when you see something good is in front of you that wasn't planned.

I would say more like “long term plans are not high specificity and all plans are subject to rapid adaptation with new information” (though I admit lots of “agile” workflows have no long term plans but extremely rigid short-term plans.)

Re: Even with Agile and Scrum waterfall will sneak in

#290

Post by rodgerd »

xondono wrote: post #9

To this day I still don’t understand how one can read the agile manifesto and somehow get to scrum. The whole thing is about processes, and tools (jira)… the complete opposite. The reason everyone ends up doing waterfall is that it’s not the devs who you need to convince when selling agility, is the chain of command. Being agile means having no long term plan. If the C-suite can’t handle that, you’ll never be agile.

> If the C-suite can’t handle that, you’ll never be agile.

My experience is that the problems are typically:

1. Finance. Market targets, multi-year budget projections, "you promised business benefits from project delivery in Q3." Finance teams do not love Agile.

2. Companies who are collections of warring fiefdoms. You need to have an organisation which is mature enough to have reasonable conversations about changing priorites, delivery timelines, and funding in a reasonably dynamic way.

Post reply on HN