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Who is the “you” here? Who is supposed to explain to the product owner that code quality and refractors are worth doing? The real issue the article brings up i

Who is the “you” here? Who is supposed to explain to the product owner that code quality and refractors are worth doing? The real issue the article brings up is that Scrum has an individual who takes ownership and responsibility for the product backlog, it has an individual who takes ownership and responsibility for the project management, but it has no individual who takes ownership and responsibility for the non visible technical aspects of the product. In an ideal world, this responsibility would be taken up by the scrum master, who would have technical expertise, but as the article points out, (a) scrum never states this, and in fact, hints in the opposite direction, and (b) this is rarely the case in the real world. The scrum masters are usually as non-technical as you can get.

nradov 8y ago
The agile team members are supposed to write refactoring user stories and explain their value to the product owner. If the team members aren't doing that then they aren't doing their jobs and need to be trained. Going beyond Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has some specific guidance on refactoring. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/refactoring/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/refactoring/
jameshart 8y ago
This is utterly backwards. The team owns it all - the process, the product, the technical artifacts, the code quality. If the team is looking to the PO or the Scrum Master to take responsibility for things, then they are going to fail. The product owner is there to help the team understand what value they can deliver. The scrum master is there to help the team optimize the process. The team hopefully has developers on it who are there to help the team make well engineered pieces of code Maybe there are designers to to help the team make great user experiences. The team has specialists, but the team works collectively to deliver results. If your scrum team has a bunch of engineers on it wondering how to get their voice heard over the product owner, you don’t have a scrum team building your software, you have a PO acting as a tech lead running a waterfall project.
Cakez0r 8y ago
> Who is the “you” here? The development team!

nradov 8y ago

The agile team members are supposed to write refactoring user stories and explain their value to the product owner. If the team members aren't doing that then they aren't doing their jobs and need to be trained. Going beyond Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has some specific guidance on refactoring. https://www.scaledagileframework.com/refactoring/ https://www.scaledagileframework.com/refactoring/

jameshart 8y ago

This is utterly backwards. The team owns it all - the process, the product, the technical artifacts, the code quality. If the team is looking to the PO or the Scrum Master to take responsibility for things, then they are going to fail. The product owner is there to help the team understand what value they can deliver. The scrum master is there to help the team optimize the process. The team hopefully has developers on it who are there to help the team make well engineered pieces of code Maybe there are designers to to help the team make great user experiences. The team has specialists, but the team works collectively to deliver results. If your scrum team has a bunch of engineers on it wondering how to get their voice heard over the product owner, you don’t have a scrum team building your software, you have a PO acting as a tech lead running a waterfall project.

Cakez0r 8y ago

> Who is the “you” here? The development team!