7 ms·

Sprints? I love sprints...I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel day in, day out. Seriously, screw scrum and 'agile'

JTbane 7y ago
"Sprint Planning" -> "How much work can we overextend our developers with" "Sprint Retrospective" -> "How much did we screw up from overextending so much"
- aaron-santos 7y ago
  What does the part of planning that calculates velocity and time budgeting look like in this context?
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
    "We don't have time for that, we're too far behind!"
strictnein 7y ago
The feeling of never finishing anything is probably the thing I hate must about agile. Just little bits completed off an ever growing backlog.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  Wasn’t it exactly how ancient Greeks imagined hell? (Sysiphos, Tantal).
- mmsimanga 7y ago
  I work in BI building data marts and reports. First we used to have what I would term technical user stories. Build this report, change that cube, build that mart... Then we added analysis stories and off late we now have design user stories. Our sprints are two weeks. One sprint ended up being the developer checking a tick box. But it took a whole month to complete because we had a two week analysis sprint and another two week "implementation" sprint. But guess what we successfully completed all our user stores.
- nradov 7y ago
  Beyond a certain point, if your backlog is continuously growing then your product owners simply aren't doing their job. The backlog should only contain thinks that can realistically be implemented within the next year or so (maybe two). Keeping anything in the backlog beyond that is pointless because by the time you get to it the customer requirements will have changed. So competent product owners need to actively purge backlog user stories which are no longer needed, and act as gatekeepers to limit what gets into the backlog in the first place.
mcv 7y ago
This has nothing to do with scrum and agile. Or if it does, then they are part of the solution, because one of the rules is that you don't do overtime. If there's too much work to include all features before the deadline, you drop some of the features. Scrum is meant to help estimate based on real work by developers, rather than on overly optimistic planning by managers. They empower the developer and give them the autonomy to do the job the way they see fit.
- samatman 7y ago
  In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
  - rytill 7y ago
    Isn’t that a theory?
- arvinsim 7y ago
  It's funny that some managers give the deadline first and then direct the developers to do Scrum to figure out how to do it in that timeline.
  - gherkinnn 7y ago
    “But we need to know how much it will cost us” “External factors demand we implement feature X by that date” “Let’s just hire more people, preferably more PMs” “We have many more ideas in our pipeline. In order to orchestrate these, we need precise estimations.”
    - thedaemon 7y ago
      My last job kept hiring more PMs and no techs. It was horrible. I kept having to tell the customers "Sorry we can't get the projects done, we have 5 project managers and only 2 techs."
  - pavel_lishin 7y ago
gherkinnn 7y ago
Yeah. The notion of sprints doesn’t seem to be healthy at all. There’s always the next big thing on the horizon. No time to reflect on what you’re doing. Closely tracking velocity, knowing full well that it’s a futile exercise in controlling what’s happening. >inb4 “you’re doing it wrong” If so many people get it wrong, I see it a problem inherent to scrum, not its various implementations.
- empath75 7y ago
  Not everyone is doing it wrong. My current sprint team is pretty laid back. I put my foot down against tracking velocity as a performance metric early on, though. But my argument against it was mostly that it was stupid and counterproductive.
  - gherkinnn 7y ago
    Interesting. Tracking during sprint or generally speaking?
    - empath75 7y ago
      Tracking it is fine. Using it to measure team or individual performance is terrible.
andrei_says_ 7y ago
You’ll love Lab Rats by Dan Lyons. Highly recommended.
wonderwonder 7y ago
But what about the relief of getting a release out to production? Immediately followed by the crushing stress of getting started on the next impossible sprint. yeah, agile is not fun.
lukey_q 7y ago
I always thought it was very strange to call them "sprints" since in my experience you start one immediately after finishing another. In real life following sprinting with more sprinting would be a good way to make yourself pass out (or worse) before too long

"Sprint Planning" -> "How much work can we overextend our developers with" "Sprint Retrospective" -> "How much did we screw up from overextending so much"

aaron-santos 7y ago
What does the part of planning that calculates velocity and time budgeting look like in this context?
- pavel_lishin 7y ago
  "We don't have time for that, we're too far behind!"

strictnein 7y ago

The feeling of never finishing anything is probably the thing I hate must about agile. Just little bits completed off an ever growing backlog.

durnygbur 7y ago
Wasn’t it exactly how ancient Greeks imagined hell? (Sysiphos, Tantal).
mmsimanga 7y ago
I work in BI building data marts and reports. First we used to have what I would term technical user stories. Build this report, change that cube, build that mart... Then we added analysis stories and off late we now have design user stories. Our sprints are two weeks. One sprint ended up being the developer checking a tick box. But it took a whole month to complete because we had a two week analysis sprint and another two week "implementation" sprint. But guess what we successfully completed all our user stores.
nradov 7y ago
Beyond a certain point, if your backlog is continuously growing then your product owners simply aren't doing their job. The backlog should only contain thinks that can realistically be implemented within the next year or so (maybe two). Keeping anything in the backlog beyond that is pointless because by the time you get to it the customer requirements will have changed. So competent product owners need to actively purge backlog user stories which are no longer needed, and act as gatekeepers to limit what gets into the backlog in the first place.

mcv 7y ago

This has nothing to do with scrum and agile. Or if it does, then they are part of the solution, because one of the rules is that you don't do overtime. If there's too much work to include all features before the deadline, you drop some of the features. Scrum is meant to help estimate based on real work by developers, rather than on overly optimistic planning by managers. They empower the developer and give them the autonomy to do the job the way they see fit.

samatman 7y ago
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
- rytill 7y ago
  Isn’t that a theory?
arvinsim 7y ago
It's funny that some managers give the deadline first and then direct the developers to do Scrum to figure out how to do it in that timeline.
- gherkinnn 7y ago
  “But we need to know how much it will cost us” “External factors demand we implement feature X by that date” “Let’s just hire more people, preferably more PMs” “We have many more ideas in our pipeline. In order to orchestrate these, we need precise estimations.”
  - thedaemon 7y ago
    My last job kept hiring more PMs and no techs. It was horrible. I kept having to tell the customers "Sorry we can't get the projects done, we have 5 project managers and only 2 techs."
- pavel_lishin 7y ago

gherkinnn 7y ago

Yeah. The notion of sprints doesn’t seem to be healthy at all. There’s always the next big thing on the horizon. No time to reflect on what you’re doing. Closely tracking velocity, knowing full well that it’s a futile exercise in controlling what’s happening. >inb4 “you’re doing it wrong” If so many people get it wrong, I see it a problem inherent to scrum, not its various implementations.

empath75 7y ago
Not everyone is doing it wrong. My current sprint team is pretty laid back. I put my foot down against tracking velocity as a performance metric early on, though. But my argument against it was mostly that it was stupid and counterproductive.
- gherkinnn 7y ago
  Interesting. Tracking during sprint or generally speaking?
  - empath75 7y ago
    Tracking it is fine. Using it to measure team or individual performance is terrible.

andrei_says_ 7y ago

You’ll love Lab Rats by Dan Lyons. Highly recommended.

wonderwonder 7y ago

But what about the relief of getting a release out to production? Immediately followed by the crushing stress of getting started on the next impossible sprint. yeah, agile is not fun.

lukey_q 7y ago

I always thought it was very strange to call them "sprints" since in my experience you start one immediately after finishing another. In real life following sprinting with more sprinting would be a good way to make yourself pass out (or worse) before too long