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My biggest beef with Scrum (and why I think it's a scam) is that they renamed everything, all the processes. Historically, there are three important sides, and
by js8 8y ago
My biggest beef with Scrum (and why I think it's a scam) is that they renamed everything, all the processes.
Historically, there are three important sides, and roles, for each project. Product management - takes care what the customer wants to have build. Project management - takes care of what is delivered is on schedule and that there is enough material/personnel to build it. Architect/engineering lead - takes care of whether the thing is technically feasible, what technologies are used and what technical trade-offs are made.
And there was a vast literature and discussion about how these three sides affect the result of the project, and how to solve these problems.
Unfortunately, Scrum, renaming everything, acts as if the history of project management doesn't exist. And if you forget history, how are you supposed to learn from it? That makes it easy to sell snake-oil. I frequently hear, for instance, that scrum master is not a project manager, despite him having some responsibilities in this area.
And as the blog post also expounds, there is no recognition for these three different sides of each project in Scrum (ironically, there is some recognition of that in Scrum derivatives such as Scaled Agile Framework, for instance, modulo nonsensical renaming of the roles).
- tootie 8y agoScrum didn't rename any of them. They added the roles of scrum master and product owner but those are roles that can be assigned to people with traditional titles in addition to their normal roles.
- blub 8y agoThe scrum master and PO should explicitly not also be the PM, there's a huge conflict of interest.
- tootie 8y agoPM can be scrum master. I've done it plenty of times. The entire scrum team should be aligned around the same objectives so a conflict of interest is not possible. The PO is outside the team and is the only one who should avoid wearing multiple hats.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- good_gnu 8y agoThe purpose of all the jargon that Scrum introduces is to avoid naming collisions with prior terminology. You probably have a good idea of what a product manager should be doing but someone else in a different company might have a different opinion. Introducing a new term eliminates this source of confusion. Admittedly, all the jargon you encounter when learning about Scrum can make you feel like you're joining a cult. However, there is a reason behind introducing it.
- lmm 8y agoI don't think there was anything like the kind of consensus you're portraying about what these things were called. Different shops used their own terms for things; "architect" meant radically different things from one pre-scrum shop to another, "engineer" even more so. "PM" would be used interchangeably; different people from the same company would tell you it was "product" or "project". I don't like renaming things for no reason, but if you want a term to have a precise meaning and not carry any baggage from previous similar-but-subtly-different usages, it's probably best to coin a novel term.
- js8 8y agoThere might not be a clear consensus what a given person does but there are three types of tasks or concerns on the project, as I outlined them. Do you disagree with that? So if Scrum (or any other methodology, for that matter) wants to define a new role (to what end?), they should explain, how they are related to these concerns? What tasks that were traditionally done by the triad are supposed to be done by the new role, and why? And moreover, how are the concerns from the triad dealt with in Scrum? That's what I miss from Scrum. There is no connection to what was before, aside from using waterfall as a straw man (it's not a methodology to begin with). It's an ideology, its own world. The result of Scrum being an ideology is, somebody who becomes scrum master in Scrum, and effectively doing project management work (in the better case), by default, has no idea that there is a field called "project management", and that he should study that field. So they don't know, for instance, the classic like Fred Brooks.
- lmm 8y ago> There might not be a clear consensus what a given person does but there are three types of tasks or concerns on the project, as I outlined them. Do you disagree with that? That's one way to break down the set of tasks/concerns you've identified, sure - but only one. I don't think that the industry as a whole accepts your categorisation into three, or even your paradigm for which tasks do and don't need addressing in this way. You're coming across as far more ideological than the thing you're attacking, assuming that your particular breakdown must be the canonical one when it simply doesn't have a level of industry acceptance that would justify that.
- specialist 8y agoI like trilemmas. Mine is "marketing" (biz case, price, feature set, aka what), "engineering" (cost, schedule, aka how), "QA" (owns the release). Loosely based on the Deming-style "quality circles" used at Ford and else where.