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My team does SCRUM at work and almost none of these apply to us. Sounds like the author works in a bad company.

by ebbv 8y ago

wolco 8y ago
I work for a good company but the team I was on a few years ago was using scrum. It really does promote pushing debt down the line because the product owner only cares about what they can see or measure. The debt isn't part of that set so the developer has to fight to address it. After the first battle many will stop fighting because they are measured by how well the product owner thinks that developer is implementing their roadmap and on track with the schedule they got approved. Products with heavy debt tend to get rewritten rather than fixed. So it makes sense to keep the schedule through shortcuts and push as many features as possible. Then throwaway the product and rewrite in something newer and more modern. For developers the benefit is your resume will have the latest tech and you can write sloppy non-abstracted code and not worrying about having to support the product later. Management gets increased visibility into each task with an accurately followed schedule. Not a surprise it has become so popular. If I could change one thing I would make the scrum master in charge of technical documentation. That one change would force the master into understanding the code at a lower level. That would make them the most knowledgable person on the project thus it would remove the need for daily standups because team members could go to the master at any point in the day with questions or to coordinate effort.
- ebbv 8y ago
  SCRUM does not push for bad, tech debt laden products any more than any other development system. Managers who want you to push code out the door ASAP will do it just as much no matter the system you’re using. The solution is not to blame whatever particular form of agile you’re using; the solution is to replace the bad managers if you can’t educate them on why that’s short sighted.
- je42 8y ago
  The development team is responsible for technical implementation. Also, the priorities are a negotiation with the product ownern. It is also in the product owners best interest that the tech debt is not piling up. In the end the PO is screwed when the product comes to halt because of the tech debt.

My team does SCRUM at work and almost none of these apply to us. Sounds like the author works in a bad company.

by ebbv 8y ago

My team does SCRUM at work and almost none of these apply to us. Sounds like the author works in a bad company.

I work for a good company but the team I was on a few years ago was using scrum. It really does promote pushing debt down the line because the product owner only cares about what they can see or measure. The debt isn't part of that set so the developer has to fight to address it. After the first battle many will stop fighting because they are measured by how well the product owner thinks that developer is implementing their roadmap and on track with the schedule they got approved. Products with heavy debt tend to get rewritten rather than fixed. So it makes sense to keep the schedule through shortcuts and push as many features as possible. Then throwaway the product and rewrite in something newer and more modern. For developers the benefit is your resume will have the latest tech and you can write sloppy non-abstracted code and not worrying about having to support the product later. Management gets increased visibility into each task with an accurately followed schedule. Not a surprise it has become so popular. If I could change one thing I would make the scrum master in charge of technical documentation. That one change would force the master into understanding the code at a lower level. That would make them the most knowledgable person on the project thus it would remove the need for daily standups because team members could go to the master at any point in the day with questions or to coordinate effort.

ebbv 8y ago
SCRUM does not push for bad, tech debt laden products any more than any other development system. Managers who want you to push code out the door ASAP will do it just as much no matter the system you’re using. The solution is not to blame whatever particular form of agile you’re using; the solution is to replace the bad managers if you can’t educate them on why that’s short sighted.
je42 8y ago
The development team is responsible for technical implementation. Also, the priorities are a negotiation with the product ownern. It is also in the product owners best interest that the tech debt is not piling up. In the end the PO is screwed when the product comes to halt because of the tech debt.