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One of the reasons SCRUM wasn't very popular in our team was that we realized it meant having a lot more meetings than we were having before. I think if you go

One of the reasons SCRUM wasn't very popular in our team was that we realized it meant having a lot more meetings than we were having before. I think if you go by the numbers, standard scrum has you spending nearly 20% in your time in developer meetings. Stand ups didn't really work for us either as we are doing our own thing most of the time, so there is little to coordinate, and when there is a need, we usually just work closely together.

dasmoth 9y ago
Capital-A-Agile puts a lot of emphasis on very fine-grained collaboration and reducing the amount of time people are "doing their own thing". Some advocates are pretty open about this being a form of micromanagement[1]. Some people thrive in high-visibility, fine-grained-collaboration environments. On the other hand, if you've got people who are already doing good work without many meetings, it's hard to see Scrum-flavoured setups being anything other than intrusive. [1] https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ssssh....agile-is-all-about-micromanaging https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ssssh....agile-is-...
- Underqualified 9y ago
  Micromanagement is indeed what it looked like to me with all the daily stand ups (what did you do yesterday), review meetings (what did you do last week ?), scoring (what do you mean it would take you longer than that other developer to finish something ?) and sprints (we HAVE to do this THIS WEEK).
  - jwdunne 9y ago
    That's certainly what it can be used for and probably is on a large scale. The most important one that a lot seem to miss is the "did you face any road blocks?", with a culture where the whole team thinks and removes the roadblock such that it is removed for everybody for good. Morphine is a pretty damn good painkiller. Unfortunately, it is extremely easy to abuse to the point where there are more people abuse it than people who genuinely benefit from it. On a larger scale, communism as it was originally conceived sounds like a utopia. Unfortunately, the only thing that's actually happened is an abuse that takes anything from democracy to authoritarian regimes well towards totalitarianism, the anti-thesis of communism. Scrum and agile is the same in that respect. Sounds great. Works well on paper but very rarely used correctly or with the original intention.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  That's what turned me away from Scrum. When you do something really difficult you end up reporting the same thing for weeks. Or you feel you shouldn't even try something difficult because you can't break down into little daily chunks. I prefer my people solve difficult problems and not just little bite-sized tasks that only touch the surface of the system.
- overgard 9y ago
  That blog post is really odd. It's like "sure you're being micromanaged, but its by a mob instead of a tyrant", as though thats a comforting thing. How is that better?! You cant just throw the word "team" in there and pretend it makes things ok.

dasmoth 9y ago

Capital-A-Agile puts a lot of emphasis on very fine-grained collaboration and reducing the amount of time people are "doing their own thing". Some advocates are pretty open about this being a form of micromanagement[1]. Some people thrive in high-visibility, fine-grained-collaboration environments. On the other hand, if you've got people who are already doing good work without many meetings, it's hard to see Scrum-flavoured setups being anything other than intrusive. [1] https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ssssh....agile-is-all-about-micromanaging https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/ssssh....agile-is-...

Underqualified 9y ago
Micromanagement is indeed what it looked like to me with all the daily stand ups (what did you do yesterday), review meetings (what did you do last week ?), scoring (what do you mean it would take you longer than that other developer to finish something ?) and sprints (we HAVE to do this THIS WEEK).
- jwdunne 9y ago
  That's certainly what it can be used for and probably is on a large scale. The most important one that a lot seem to miss is the "did you face any road blocks?", with a culture where the whole team thinks and removes the roadblock such that it is removed for everybody for good. Morphine is a pretty damn good painkiller. Unfortunately, it is extremely easy to abuse to the point where there are more people abuse it than people who genuinely benefit from it. On a larger scale, communism as it was originally conceived sounds like a utopia. Unfortunately, the only thing that's actually happened is an abuse that takes anything from democracy to authoritarian regimes well towards totalitarianism, the anti-thesis of communism. Scrum and agile is the same in that respect. Sounds great. Works well on paper but very rarely used correctly or with the original intention.
maxxxxx 9y ago
That's what turned me away from Scrum. When you do something really difficult you end up reporting the same thing for weeks. Or you feel you shouldn't even try something difficult because you can't break down into little daily chunks. I prefer my people solve difficult problems and not just little bite-sized tasks that only touch the surface of the system.
overgard 9y ago
That blog post is really odd. It's like "sure you're being micromanaged, but its by a mob instead of a tyrant", as though thats a comforting thing. How is that better?! You cant just throw the word "team" in there and pretend it makes things ok.