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The most toxic example of Agile/Scrum I've come across so far has been in a company that was non-technical at its core but wanted badly to pivot to a SaaS busin

The most toxic example of Agile/Scrum I've come across so far has been in a company that was non-technical at its core but wanted badly to pivot to a SaaS business model. The type of company that 50% of the employees have the word "manager" in their title yet manage no one (Digital Project Manager, Technical Project Manager, Product Manager, etc). I think its just in a lot of companies culture that if they can instill some process, any process really, then the results will follow. And software engineers complaining about the demoralizing effects of being micro-managed by junior coworkers who never wrote a line of code in their life are just typical spoiled tech workers. Other companies I've worked for that used Agile methodology were not all that much better, just somewhat less absurd. I'm glad I've gotten out of that world, its left such a bad taste in my mouth I don't know if I can even look at Agile objectively anymore.

jrochkind1 7y ago
Both my best AND worse experiences with process have been 'agile'. (Although the best was NOT "Scrum"). And not just because all of my experiences have been agile (they have not been). For agile to work well, you need a competent team and manager, AND be embedded in an organization (ie, who determines appraisal of your manager/team) which truly is concerned with prioritizing value to business/customer over, say, "looking good to other managers", or "trying futilely to predict what the software will look like a year from now, because it makes me feel in control" or "weird power struggles with other parts of the organization". Everyone (or at least the majority of those with the power to make you miserable or break your career) has to be really at least trying to work together to maximize business/customer value. If you have that, is your experience (and your software) going to be good whether you use agile or not? Probably. But agile is a really useful and effective mindset for making your software product _and_ your experience (stress-levels for instance) even better. It works, in my experience. If you don't have that, is your experience (and your software) going to be terrible using agile or not, in proportion to how much you don't have it? Sure. And agile and especially scrum can probably make it even worse.

jrochkind1 7y ago

Both my best AND worse experiences with process have been 'agile'. (Although the best was NOT "Scrum"). And not just because all of my experiences have been agile (they have not been). For agile to work well, you need a competent team and manager, AND be embedded in an organization (ie, who determines appraisal of your manager/team) which truly is concerned with prioritizing value to business/customer over, say, "looking good to other managers", or "trying futilely to predict what the software will look like a year from now, because it makes me feel in control" or "weird power struggles with other parts of the organization". Everyone (or at least the majority of those with the power to make you miserable or break your career) has to be really at least trying to work together to maximize business/customer value. If you have that, is your experience (and your software) going to be good whether you use agile or not? Probably. But agile is a really useful and effective mindset for making your software product _and_ your experience (stress-levels for instance) even better. It works, in my experience. If you don't have that, is your experience (and your software) going to be terrible using agile or not, in proportion to how much you don't have it? Sure. And agile and especially scrum can probably make it even worse.