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Scrum is a cancer

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Re: Scrum is a cancer

#91

Post by theshrike79 »

hw wrote: post #58

I’ve managed teams that have been excellent without scrum. Then there’s one or two teams that just cannot get things done and are all over the place. Had to introduce scrum to get more structure and accountability to getting things done. Once the team started having a good cadence, slowly weaned off scrum. Tldr; scrum is another tool in your toolbelt you can reach for. Some teams work better with scrum, some dont. Ex…

This is the correct answer.

Different teams get by with different amounts of Scrum Processes.

Less experienced ones need the full-on shit with backlog grooming, planning poker, dailies and retrospectives.

When the team gets better (and there isn't much turnover), you can relax the Processes.

I'm pretty sure I might be the only one on HN who has Scrum actually work in real life. (I've had my share of shitty-Scrum too, like 45 minute "dailies"... =)

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#92

Post by kmoser »

intelVISA wrote: post #61
jdougan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I too despise Scrum, the causation could be runming the other way: the Bosses that have a better team could be more likely to let them run without major pressure.

No love for Scrum but this is the more likely explanation. A good team that runs itself? Ofc it doesn't need Ten Scrum Masters to deliver value. Now, the real question is why leadership tries to salvage failing teams with Scrum? Save the wasted money, use it to hire top talent instead... easy.

Top programming talent may still need to be managed (and in fact may need to be managed more than lower quality talent). The sweet spot is to hire top programming talent who is also good at intra-team communication and can organize themselves with little direction from management except to be informed about outside factors like client priorities.

Even better is top talent who can also interface directly with the client when necessary (not necessarily all the time) and doesn't need everything first filtered through a manager.

I've worked with teams like this in the past and it was always a pleasure. Most of them were fairly experienced devs and knew the value of email, phone calls, and water cooler talk (serendipitous discussions which led to valuable information being exchanged). Despite the lack of "modern" productivity tools like text messages, chat apps, and Slack, we were able to get stuff done efficiently.

We had weekly meetings which were productive and useful, and actually helped identify if anything was falling through the cracks. Nobody got bored because the meetings were actually helpful.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#93

Post by tasubotadas »

beardedwizard wrote: post #67

I would have guessed more HN readers would attempt to understand the desired outcomes, how the implementation attempts to achieve them, then take the good from the bad as a source of constant improvement. The tone on this thread has that jaded and defeatest "management sucks" attitude that I find most often in the least productive engineers regardless of how they work.

The guys here come to the scrum retrospectives, stay silent the entire time, and then complain that scrum sucks.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#94

Post by avinassh »

telltruth wrote: post #60

Most people don’t know some history. During 1990s, a group of people made a fortune out of consulting gigs where they will be called in by their CTO friends in traditional enterprises to save the late and over budget projects. One of these people was Kent Beck. Kent will use his license to kill to turn things around and eventually generalize his rescue formula and sell it to make 100X more. His crowning glory during…

What's wrong with TDD

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#95

Post by bongoman37 »

intelVISA wrote: post #61
jdougan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I too despise Scrum, the causation could be runming the other way: the Bosses that have a better team could be more likely to let them run without major pressure.

No love for Scrum but this is the more likely explanation. A good team that runs itself? Ofc it doesn't need Ten Scrum Masters to deliver value. Now, the real question is why leadership tries to salvage failing teams with Scrum? Save the wasted money, use it to hire top talent instead... easy.

[dead]

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#96

Post by emilio1337 »

Assume you need to build a chair. You barely have seen a chair in you life. You would naturally start naively with a first approach. That will fail to carry a person at first. But as your approach advances you’ll gain experience and eventually you will build the chair after some while.

That is my understanding of what people name scrum or agile. A management harness with fancy words. The real benefit is when you let people do their work, gain experience and make them self organize their problems.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#97

Post by davidw »

I don't have a lot of strong feelings about 'process' stuff, but boy do I loathe self-important sounding talk like "ceremonies". I was explaining some work stuff to my mom, who knows BS when she hears it and I could practically hear her eyes rolling over the phone when I mentioned how they had started calling things "ceremonies" at work.

Things like weddings, graduations and funerals are important moments in life that cultures all over the world honor with ceremonies of some kind. Your quick morning meeting to discuss what you're working on isn't a @#(#(#( "ceremony".

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#98

Post by theshrike79 »

intelVISA wrote: post #68
bonestamp2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do a very loose agile process and everyone seems to like it. Basically, we have a standup every morning. Each team member has up to 1 minute to list (in very brief form) what they did yesterday and what they plan to do today. It identifies if anyone will be stepping on anyone else's toes, or if anyone knows of something similar and can point you to it, and it lets the project manager know if anyone is working on s…

Nice, though part of me wonders: if using version control why bother reading off yesterday's commits? Rest is pretty good and accurate imo.

"what they did yesterday and what they plan to do today" is not something you can read off people's commits

"I was figuring out how to add a doohickey that widgets foobar" is not a commit, but during the daily someone else might remember that there already is something that can widget foobars. Or they might know that widgeting foobars was tried before and it failed because X and Y.

Then they won't start debugging that during the daily, but will point it out and get in touch afterwards along with others that might care. Either on a $TEXTUAL_MESSAGING_APP thread or $VIDEO_CALL_SERVICE call.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#99

Post by beardedwizard »

tasubotadas wrote: post #93
beardedwizard wrote: post #67

I would have guessed more HN readers would attempt to understand the desired outcomes, how the implementation attempts to achieve them, then take the good from the bad as a source of constant improvement. The tone on this thread has that jaded and defeatest "management sucks" attitude that I find most often in the least productive engineers regardless of how they work.

The guys here come to the scrum retrospectives, stay silent the entire time, and then complain that scrum sucks.

Too true, seen it so many times.

Re: Scrum is a cancer

#100

Post by loremd »

davidw wrote: post #97

I don't have a lot of strong feelings about 'process' stuff, but boy do I loathe self-important sounding talk like "ceremonies". I was explaining some work stuff to my mom, who knows BS when she hears it and I could practically hear her eyes rolling over the phone when I mentioned how they had started calling things "ceremonies" at work. Things like weddings, graduations and funerals are important moments in life tha…

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