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Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

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Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#51

Post by michelangelo »

JimDabell wrote: post #13

They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably. These are two entirely different concepts. Sprints are just a way of breaking up work into discrete periods of time. There’s nothing about them that implies “drama, broken marriages, or broken families”. If you don’t finish the work you had planned to during a sprint then you fail the sprint, talk about why during the retro, then do a better job of all…

> They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably.

That’s absolutely not what’s written there and I’m surprised the context - and the narrative goal of the article - is not being grasped.

To put it more simply and distill it even more the gist is: “senior professionals know how to work and can manage their work structure/pace”.

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#52

Post by zo1 »

JimDabell wrote: post #41
audiodude wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At every former company, where we tried to use Agile or sprints, we ended up reaching a system where we just had basically "one big rolling sprint". Every two weeks, only a few tasks were actually done, and every task got pulled into the next "sprint". Combine this with the fact that we weren't delivering any artifacts at the end of the sprint, so we didn't have any feedback from stakeholders and weren't really itera…

> we ended up reaching a system where we just had basically "one big rolling sprint". But there’s no such thing as “one big rolling sprint” though. If it’s “one big rolling…” then it can’t be a sprint. It’s like dehydrated water. It’s conceptually incoherent. To untangle the wording of this, when you say your process became “one big rolling sprint”, what you’re actually saying is that you stopped using sprints, aren’…

Also known as the No True Scotsman argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman. "You weren't doing real Agile™".

The only reason I'm posting this is because we have had similar things happen in almost every attempt at using sprints. They're just not suited for any sort of formal/business context where you don't have absolute and frankly religious buy-in to the concept.

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#53

Post by lionkor »

antisthenes wrote: post #32
JimDabell wrote: post #13

They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably. These are two entirely different concepts. Sprints are just a way of breaking up work into discrete periods of time. There’s nothing about them that implies “drama, broken marriages, or broken families”. If you don’t finish the work you had planned to during a sprint then you fail the sprint, talk about why during the retro, then do a better job of all…

> If you don’t finish the work you had planned to during a sprint then you fail the sprint, talk about why during the retro, then do a better job of allocating work in the next sprint. You don't even "fail" the sprint, that's a bad attitude. You just consider work spilled over and take on less work + spillover work next sprint. There's only cause for concern if you repeatedly have spillovers every sprint - that's usu…

Or you might have spillover because the team is very new and hasnt quite agreed on the value of a story point yet

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#55

Post by 261582335426158 »

zo1 wrote: post #52
JimDabell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we ended up reaching a system where we just had basically "one big rolling sprint". But there’s no such thing as “one big rolling sprint” though. If it’s “one big rolling…” then it can’t be a sprint. It’s like dehydrated water. It’s conceptually incoherent. To untangle the wording of this, when you say your process became “one big rolling sprint”, what you’re actually saying is that you stopped using sprints, aren’…

Also known as the No True Scotsman argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman . "You weren't doing real Agile™". The only reason I'm posting this is because we have had similar things happen in almost every attempt at using sprints. They're just not suited for any sort of formal/business context where you don't have absolute and frankly religious buy-in to the concept.

It is a fallacy only if in support of "Trying to use sprints will improve your organization", it would not be a fallacy if in support of "The benefit of sprints are real but only if used properly" where properly is defined in some clear a priori way.

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#56

Post by YZF »

audiodude wrote: post #29
JimDabell wrote: post #13

They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably. These are two entirely different concepts. Sprints are just a way of breaking up work into discrete periods of time. There’s nothing about them that implies “drama, broken marriages, or broken families”. If you don’t finish the work you had planned to during a sprint then you fail the sprint, talk about why during the retro, then do a better job of all…

At every former company, where we tried to use Agile or sprints, we ended up reaching a system where we just had basically "one big rolling sprint". Every two weeks, only a few tasks were actually done, and every task got pulled into the next "sprint". Combine this with the fact that we weren't delivering any artifacts at the end of the sprint, so we didn't have any feedback from stakeholders and weren't really itera…

From my experience it can work. I've worked on a team where we got really good at estimating, had really useful planning sessions, a good backlog. Worked pretty well and had some advantages in terms of getting the team to be engaged and take ownership.

The problem with Agile in general is that it can easily be twisted around to make anything you want. A great team doesn't need agile methods, but it can use them and still be great, and possibly even get some improvement with careful use. Agile intended to fix organizations but organizations don't want to be fixed, and certainly not by a bunch of software people...

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#57

Post by ssss11 »

audiodude wrote: post #29
JimDabell wrote: post #13

They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably. These are two entirely different concepts. Sprints are just a way of breaking up work into discrete periods of time. There’s nothing about them that implies “drama, broken marriages, or broken families”. If you don’t finish the work you had planned to during a sprint then you fail the sprint, talk about why during the retro, then do a better job of all…

At every former company, where we tried to use Agile or sprints, we ended up reaching a system where we just had basically "one big rolling sprint". Every two weeks, only a few tasks were actually done, and every task got pulled into the next "sprint". Combine this with the fact that we weren't delivering any artifacts at the end of the sprint, so we didn't have any feedback from stakeholders and weren't really itera…

In my experience I’ve found (1) some teams don’t embrace it, (2) some teams don’t break down large tasks or (3) it’s not suited to the work. Each of these result in your rolling sprint. I absolutely hate seeing buzzwords for the sake of them but often the work simply doesn’t work well with sprints.

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#58

Post by jjav »

JimDabell wrote: post #13

They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably. These are two entirely different concepts. Sprints are just a way of breaking up work into discrete periods of time. There’s nothing about them that implies “drama, broken marriages, or broken families”. If you don’t finish the work you had planned to during a sprint then you fail the sprint, talk about why during the retro, then do a better job of all…

> They seem to be using “sprint” and “death march” interchangeably. These are two entirely different concepts.

I don't think so. That's why sprints are so toxic. It's even right in the name. A 100m run is a "sprint", but nobody expects you to maintain that pace for a marathon. Much less for a multi-decade career. But in software you're expected to be in a sprinting pace all life long. And even increasing your "velocity" constantly. If that's not a death march, what is.

> Sprints are just a way of breaking up work into discrete periods of time.

There is not rational purpose to this. If the work takes 4 days, there's no reason to fabricate an artificial sprint boundary that forces you to break it down into two 2-day tasks just to fit into the confines of this imaginary sprint. It'll still be done four days from now.

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#59

Post by JimDabell »

zo1 wrote: post #52
JimDabell wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we ended up reaching a system where we just had basically "one big rolling sprint". But there’s no such thing as “one big rolling sprint” though. If it’s “one big rolling…” then it can’t be a sprint. It’s like dehydrated water. It’s conceptually incoherent. To untangle the wording of this, when you say your process became “one big rolling sprint”, what you’re actually saying is that you stopped using sprints, aren’…

Also known as the No True Scotsman argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman . "You weren't doing real Agile™". The only reason I'm posting this is because we have had similar things happen in almost every attempt at using sprints. They're just not suited for any sort of formal/business context where you don't have absolute and frankly religious buy-in to the concept.

The “No true Scotsman” fallacy is when you introduce unrelated criteria to disqualify something that would ordinarily be a member of a group. It’s perfectly reasonable to point out that somebody who was not born in Scotland, does not have Scottish family, does not hold any kind of British citizenship, and has never even set foot in Scotland is not, in fact, a Scotsman. That’s not a fallacy.

A sprint is a discrete period of time in which discrete software development tasks happen. A “rolling sprint” is conceptually void. You can’t have a discrete period of time that lasts indefinitely any more than you can have dehydrated water. The “rolling” part and the “sprint” part are mutually exclusive.

I’m not even saying that they weren’t “doing real Agile” – I’m pointing out that what is being described has literally no meaning at all. You can’t be good or bad at it because it’s a meaningless term.

Re: Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all (2021)

#60

Post by janosdebugs »

I think the main issue with sprints is that people start feeling like robots. This hampers creativity and drive immensely. I've been in ste software industry for a good 15+ years and I have never observed the opposite. People start doing pointless busywork like ticket engineerinf instead of being enthusiastic about what they do and working towards that. I've had the displeasure of witnessing several teams die once Scrum was forced on them or they decided to switch themselves.
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