How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
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How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
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Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#2Usually in interviews I check if they use Jira in their day to day process. If they do, I don't join that company.
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#3The article mentions:
> Scrum got in the way of shipping on a daily basis. The whole idea of Scrum revolves around Sprints, of committing to tasks at the beginning of the sprint, working on these during the sprint, and demoing what we did at the end.
What if each team member came up with a few tickets to work on during let's say a 2 week sprint and then these tickets were shipped as they were finished resulting in releasing new code potentially every day or couple of days?
I've worked with a bunch of companies (contract work) and very rarely did they stick with 4-6 week sprints but only shipped everything at once in the end. That would be really dangerous. Almost always things were shipped as they were completed and reviewed.
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#4One pet peeve of mine: people often say they run a "lightweight" version of some project management philosophy and end up paying the costs of it without the benefits. For example lightweight agile scrum meaning sprints, but no retros and work constantly coming into and out of a sprint.
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#5Usually in interviews I check if they use Jira in their day to day process. If they do, I don't join that company.
What would you use instead?
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#6At Shopify, we tend to do whatever our engineers want in this regard. My team meets weekly and looks at a kanban project board. If we need to adjust, we have retros, etc and change the process. We have the autonomy.
In a past life you would be told Agile meant “self organizing teams”. But in practice that was only allowed in a narrow definition of change under the prescribed process being foisted on teams from above.
IMO while you need some consistency to get alignment on goals at a high level and coarse quarter-level goals, at the team level you can more or less let the team decide and then judge them on their effectiveness.
Odd how so many companies want to do “what [successful tech co] does”. Yet those companies innovate their own processes.
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#7My tinfoil hat theory is that Scrum was invented by Big Tech to hobble potential future competitors.
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#8The article mentions: > Scrum got in the way of shipping on a daily basis. The whole idea of Scrum revolves around Sprints, of committing to tasks at the beginning of the sprint, working on these during the sprint, and demoing what we did at the end. What if each team member came up with a few tickets to work on during let's say a 2 week sprint and then these tickets were shipped as they were finished resulting in re…
You forget that there's a big administrative load added to a two week scrum (planning, daily, daily...), that you need to test and validate, potentially validate the work with QA and do a demonstration at the end. I've never seen a two week sprint working as intended.
Especially if you factor the interruption for fix, new feature discussion, task that are more complex than expected and so on.
If you add a manager in the loop, pressuring the team member to agree to unrealistic deadline, Scrum is pretty much the best way to destroy everyone involved.
Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#9Re: How big tech runs tech projects and the curious absence of Scrum
#10My tinfoil hat theory is that Scrum was invented by Big Tech to hobble potential future competitors.
Nah, it was created to add a new industry on top of IT. Everyone is doing Agil.. I mean Scrum. So everyone need to be certified, to follow workshop, to follow the "innovation", to buy the associated toolings and so on.