Does scrum ruin great engineers or are you doing it wrong? • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by jay_kyburz » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:36 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #53

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…

> Of that, probably the formal estimation methods (replaced in Scrum by intuition for some reason) This has benefits and downsides. One of the one hand, the development team getting to control the estimate helps to control the workload. On the other, I agree. Why are we pulling estimates of effort out of thin air? Why are we being asked how long it will take to do work in sections of code we have never seen? Planning…

>Planning could be far more accurate if we just got a proposed task list a day before planning.

Why don't you work that in to your process. It's called Agile for a reason.

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

#62

Post by onion2k » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:38 AM UTC

andi999 wrote: post #49

onion2k wrote: post #18

Very productive individuals that don’t work as a team I refuse to have those people on my team. One person who's twice as productive as everyone else sounds great, but if that person's work doesn't fit well and makes everyone else's work harder it always been a net loss in my experience. I'd prefer my team works well together than have some "brilliant loner" join it.

Actually the brilliant loner should be the norm (to have one), not the exception. If you believe in the 20:80 rule, that 20% of the people to 80% of the work. This rule doesnt sound so bad but actually (lets take these numbers as strict and not as a probability distribution). It means your top perfomer are 16 times more productive than the lower performers. Lets say you have a team of 10 people doing 100 work units.…

In my experience having a brilliant loner on the team increases the amount of work the team needs to do by more than they contribute. Also, very often, what they contribute is clever solutions to problems that didn't need clever solutions. The few teams when I've had that sort of person on my team productivity has gone down, not up.

Regarding the point you make about 20% of the people doing 80% of the work, that's half true. I find that 20% of the people do 80% of the work, but for any given period of time it's not always the same 20% of the people. One iteration might have a couple of back-end devs doing most of the stories, and the next iteration will find those two doing less while 80% of the stories are done by a DBA and a UX researcher. I've never had a team where one person consistently does most of the work. If that was the case I would be concerned about the make up of the team - clearly I'd need more people who do the sort of work that person is doing and less of the other team members.

Obviously my experience is not universal, so your experience may be very different.

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

#63

Post by usrusr » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

remontoire wrote: post #60

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…

what does YADIW mean?

"You are doing it wrong", the first and last thing any scrum believer will say to someone for whom it does not work.

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

#64

Post by mattmanser » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

rawoke083600 wrote: post #55

onion2k wrote: post #18

Very productive individuals that don’t work as a team I refuse to have those people on my team. One person who's twice as productive as everyone else sounds great, but if that person's work doesn't fit well and makes everyone else's work harder it always been a net loss in my experience. I'd prefer my team works well together than have some "brilliant loner" join it.

Ja I've seen teams without them (10x, brilliant loner, call them what you want). The times the teams are without that sort of talent(just talking pure problem solving ability here)... was the times the teams, product and company was also just that. mediocre/not-inspiring/meh. And they weren't solving a hard problems ! If we were to take this to the extreme. Where do you slot in someone like Jeff Dean ? Are you going…

What's with all the ellipses? Really makes it hard to understand what you're saying.

Almost all of them should be replaced with simple commas or full stops.

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

#65

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

remontoire wrote: post #60

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…

what does YADIW mean?

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:43 AM UTC

remontoire wrote: post #60

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…

what does YADIW mean?

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by onion2k » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

rawoke083600 wrote: post #55

onion2k wrote: post #18

Very productive individuals that don’t work as a team I refuse to have those people on my team. One person who's twice as productive as everyone else sounds great, but if that person's work doesn't fit well and makes everyone else's work harder it always been a net loss in my experience. I'd prefer my team works well together than have some "brilliant loner" join it.

Ja I've seen teams without them (10x, brilliant loner, call them what you want). The times the teams are without that sort of talent(just talking pure problem solving ability here)... was the times the teams, product and company was also just that. mediocre/not-inspiring/meh. And they weren't solving a hard problems ! If we were to take this to the extreme. Where do you slot in someone like Jeff Dean ? Are you going…

they weren't solving a hard problems

That's absolutely true. I work on web apps for startups - most of the problems are quite simple. Jeff Dean would be bored out of his mind by the problems I solve.

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

#68

Post by jay_kyburz » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

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…

>idea that ideal software development is just a continuous production of small improvements to the code.

Many of us do believe this. Absolutely.

>It is highly discrete when it comes to output, because it takes time and experimentation to come up with the correct way to approach a problem, but if you do it right, you save yourself an incredible amount of time.

But on the flip side, if you get it wrong you waste an incredible amount of time.

The smaller the steps you take, the smaller the risk you step in the wrong direction.

I can't really comment on the rest of your comment because as far as I'm aware SCRUM means something different everywhere. I have no idea, for example, why a scrum team would not use formal estimation methods and rely on intuition.

Agile project management should mean you can examine your process and improve it. If your intuitive estimates are not accurate, you should be able to suggest a different method and see if you get better estimates.

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

#69

Post by jariel » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:44 AM UTC

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…

This is a very good point, but often for established code bases, many things are just incremental. If the architecture is in place and well understood, especially if it's more of a business app ... then it's not Math ... it's more like Carpentry.

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

#70

Post by nnevala » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

remontoire wrote: post #60

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…

what does YADIW mean?

I think it stands for You Are Doing It Wrong.