Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis • Hacker News Board

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#31

Post by matthewmacleod » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

RalfR wrote: post #25

matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

I actually started writing a point-by-point response to this, but it mutated into a thousand words and will be better suited to a blog post at some point in the future. In the meantime, I think these are generally the same shallow straw-man arguments against Scrum that we all see pretty frequently. I guess the key points to bear in mind will be: - Scrum is not a be-all and end-all solution to all product development.…

I value your opinion, even if I do not agree with it. The argument of "Scrum being poorly implemented" is brought again and again. It's just another one of these go-to killer arguments. If Scrum is so mega simple, why do we see endless cases of it failing to being implemented correctly? Maybe we should start thinking of a framework, that people can actually implement and make successful, without requiring an entire a…

If Scrum is so mega simple, why do we see endless cases of it failing to being implemented correctly?

That's simple, I think:

- 1. Scrum is not actually 'mega simple'. Like I said, it's a framework of outline for building a system suited to your organisation. It still requires skilled people to implement it correctly. It's like expecting coders to become magically better because they start using a framework like Rails - it might describe good practices, but it won't fix bad developers!

- 2. Related to that, we see bad implementations because methodology will not fix a broken organisation. If you have bad developers or bad managers, you will not produce good products. If you hire a bad consultant, you will not produce a working Scrum implementation.

Maybe we should start thinking of a framework, that people can actually implement and make successful, without requiring an entire army of coaches and consultants, who make a ton of money from it

It's obviously possible to have working and efficient implementations of Scrum; I'll testify that ours is excellent, and that's mostly down to hiring a very effective Agile Coach who knows how to implement it properly. And I know we're not the only ones - I expect you'll never hear about the good implementations full of happy developers!

The existence of an army of awful, unqualified consultants is a separate issue. You wouldn't expect to hire bad programmers and get good software; why would you expect good methodologies from bad consultants?

Hire someone skilled and let them implement a good system, and it will work.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#32

Post by Morst » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

RalfR wrote: post #27

quanticle wrote: post #21

Like committing to a sprint target. And literally doing everything to fulfill it. Like not waiting for a manager to step in and ask for overtime and weekend shifts. Remember? Scrum teams take all the necessary steps themselves. Always! Isn't the entire point of scrum to enforce a sustainable pace of development? One that doesn't require heroics like having programmers come in on nights and weekends to finish? The ent…

Well, as far as I understood, Scrum's fundamental principle dictates that the team delivers working software at the end of every Sprint. This has partially to do with not over committing at the beginning, but if the team fails to judge correctly, it has to do what needs to be done to fulfil its promises. Unfortunately, this clear obligation gets forgotten to often – as I pointed out in the original post. You seem to…

But another point often forgotten is that the main goal is to deliver a working increment. Even if not the whole sprint gets delivered for some reason.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#33

Post by einrealist » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:39 PM UTC

RalfR wrote: post #30

einrealist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel degraded by the version of Scrum your team is doing, then the team is doing it wrong or at least the retrospectives are not working. And if you want to make your own decisions, then you are probably better off alone. But that is not the fault of Scrum.

If almost everybody "is doing Scrum wrong", is it maybe because of its fundamentally bad design?

How do you come to think, that almost everybody is failing at it? I don't experience that. Isn't it like with every other problem in our world? We hear from them far earlier and with big noise. Success remains quiet.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#34

Post by sheepmullet » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

I actually started writing a point-by-point response to this, but it mutated into a thousand words and will be better suited to a blog post at some point in the future. In the meantime, I think these are generally the same shallow straw-man arguments against Scrum that we all see pretty frequently. I guess the key points to bear in mind will be: - Scrum is not a be-all and end-all solution to all product development.…

"Perhaps I'm just biased, because I've been working in excellently-managed agile teams that have been delivering software very effectively, and have seen how useful Scrum has been as a framework to manage the complexity of planning it."

I'm lucky enough to have been in the industry before agile and scrum were popular and back before the agile days I worked on excellently managed teams that delivered great software effectively. I've also seen a lot of agile projects crash and burn.

At it's core agile is a small set of guiding principles. Principals I'm sure most of us agree with. Yet it's hard to sell these principles to process heavy organisations. I've seen it fail time and time again despite the efforts of top consultants and coaches.

IMO, agiles real success has been in giving structure to cowboy driven teams. Teams that now actually write requirements down. You could never convince these "cowboys" to write an SRS... But a few user stories... That's more realistic.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#35

Post by RalfR » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:42 PM UTC

einrealist wrote: post #29

RalfR wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value your opinion, even if I do not agree with it. The argument of "Scrum being poorly implemented" is brought again and again. It's just another one of these go-to killer arguments. If Scrum is so mega simple, why do we see endless cases of it failing to being implemented correctly? Maybe we should start thinking of a framework, that people can actually implement and make successful, without requiring an entire a…

We fail because it is about people interacting with each other. We fail, because we were trained to work on our own and competitively. We fail, because we have trouble to change our mindset and have even more trouble to change the minds of others. This is why we will fail at alternatives to Scrum, too. Scrum requires a different mindset. It requires us to work in a team with honesty and jointly in order to be success…

In other words: Scrum would work in Utopia?

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#36

Post by Morst » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

RalfR wrote: post #25

matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

I actually started writing a point-by-point response to this, but it mutated into a thousand words and will be better suited to a blog post at some point in the future. In the meantime, I think these are generally the same shallow straw-man arguments against Scrum that we all see pretty frequently. I guess the key points to bear in mind will be: - Scrum is not a be-all and end-all solution to all product development.…

I value your opinion, even if I do not agree with it. The argument of "Scrum being poorly implemented" is brought again and again. It's just another one of these go-to killer arguments. If Scrum is so mega simple, why do we see endless cases of it failing to being implemented correctly? Maybe we should start thinking of a framework, that people can actually implement and make successful, without requiring an entire a…

From my experience most of the time companies/teams didn't even try to implement Scrum. Like having multiple product owners, skipping meetings, inventing new meetings, product owners not attending sprint planing or developers not caring about the process at all. The product owner is a single point of failure. If he does not work well it is hard for a team to deliver. In most teams I worked so far team members haven't even read the Scrum Guide nor gotten any training and didn't care.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#37

Post by cc2 » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC

If you have no control over requirements and a bunch of people who can't work together towards a common goal, I'm not sure what, if any, methodology will work.

The main complaints against Agile by developers are: 1) I want to hide in my technology rathole and never come out. 2) I'm allergic to accountability and can't take people asking me once per day what I'm up to. 3) I don't want to have to talk to other people.

So, if any of those apply to someone you're going to implement Agile with, they're not going to be happy.

Agile is as much a cultural agreement as a methodological agreement.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#38

Post by nl » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 11:10 PM UTC

RalfR wrote: post #25

matthewmacleod wrote: post #24

I actually started writing a point-by-point response to this, but it mutated into a thousand words and will be better suited to a blog post at some point in the future. In the meantime, I think these are generally the same shallow straw-man arguments against Scrum that we all see pretty frequently. I guess the key points to bear in mind will be: - Scrum is not a be-all and end-all solution to all product development.…

I value your opinion, even if I do not agree with it. The argument of "Scrum being poorly implemented" is brought again and again. It's just another one of these go-to killer arguments. If Scrum is so mega simple, why do we see endless cases of it failing to being implemented correctly? Maybe we should start thinking of a framework, that people can actually implement and make successful, without requiring an entire a…

If Scrum is so mega simple, why do we see endless cases of it failing to being implemented correctly?

It fails because the problem it is trying to solve is so hard.

There is no silver-bullet methodology that make delivering quality software on time easy. Scrum does make a decent job of it though in an environment where Scrum can be implemented correctly. If it can't be implemented, then it won't work.

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#39

Post by edwinnathaniel » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 11:11 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #10

I love collecting these rants. For a long time, I've been convinced that various techniques may be fine and dandy, but the way we implement change in organizations sucks . Fair disclosure: 1) I teach/coach Agile/Lean/Kanban/Scrum, and 2) I couldn't care less about brand names and religious dogma. I'm a developer first. If it works, do it. Having said that, this author does not know what he is talking about. Apologies…

This is an interesting remark:

"Technology development is certainly tough. It's that you need to realize that the enemy of productivity has been siloing people and specialists that want to hand-off their work to others."

What if the type of challenges that need to be solved involves: embedded device all the way up to cloud, big data, and devops automation where some of these things require specialties?

Some sprints might be heavy duty on a specific area of specialties, how can Scrum balance the productivity within a team?

Re: Scrum seems to be mostly about having better alibis

#40

Post by frostmatthew » Sun, Mar 15, 2015, 11:16 PM UTC

qooleot wrote: post #16

qooleot wrote: post #6

"Your Product Owner is more like a Shadow Product Onwer" Typo with 'Onwer'?

Hey curious about downvote (honestly, want to know why). I didn't see anything saying that was a bad idea in the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I felt the typo was one where I had to do a double-take and make sure it wasn't some purposeful acronym. So, I posted a quick note since it looked like the HN poster also was the article writer, and my comment would drift to the bottom quickly…

> Hey curious about downvote (honestly, want to know why). I didn't see anything saying that was a bad idea in the HN guidelines

I didn't downvote the typo comment but I find it odd you would read through the guidelines to see if commenting about typos is taboo but failed to notice it says Resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.