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Every time another one of those anti-agile or anti-agile-scrum pops up it seems to just be someone having a bad experience. The point of a methodology isn't to

Every time another one of those anti-agile or anti-agile-scrum pops up it seems to just be someone having a bad experience. The point of a methodology isn't to follow the methodology, but to use what is useful. Maybe 1 or 2 weeks per sprint isn't useful. Then maybe don't do that. Or maybe you can't estimate how much time your development might take. In that case, maybe do a little more thinking instead of presenting a black hole of time to the people that pay you. Take apart the problem until you do get a sense of how complex and/or time-consuming it might be. Same goes for the deliverables or measurable impact; just because something has a name "an endpoint, a button, a page" doesn't mean that that defines a quantity of work or defines what you can or must deliver. Plan for what you know can be made, not for what you don't know. Having 6 months of 'planned' development seems highly unlikely to be successful, why not plan 1 month at most, and re-plan when you are near the end of the run. If people keep planning things they cannot predict it's going to keep failing.

choeger 6y ago
> The point of a methodology isn't to follow the methodology, In scrum, it is. Scrum was developed for managers to distract from the fact that they know nothing about software. So the methodology is all there is. Go ahead, ask a (non developer) scrum master about why there need to be cross functional teams, when 80% of your work never crosses the component boundary. Or go ask them who priorizes bug fixing (do this when PO, Ops, and customer care share the same room, hilarious!).
- oneplane 6y ago
  I'm not sure what managers have to do with scrum here. A manager is a person that insulates business from the execution on a non-functional level. Perhaps this is a difference in where you work (the company, the culture, the country), but here a manager is just someone who has the job of making sure there are no obstructions and people have what they need and don't get shifted around too much. Priorities are made based in input from owners, users and developers, and cross-functional teams are something that you do in a SIG, not in a development team. Maybe SCRUM (R) as a commercial idea has a lot of things it wants you do to, but that's not really why you'd even consider something; you consider something because it might help you or clarify something for others, and for novices it can be great if you don't have the experience, skills, insight or level of thinking to come up with a self-improving process by yourself.
a_imho 6y ago
The point of a methodology isn't to follow the methodology Then what's the point? If you cherry pick whatever you feel like, then why call it Scrum? There are people who benefit from Scrum but they are mainly not developers.
- oneplane 6y ago
  You give a set of ideas a name so that you can refer to that set. You also don't run your processes based on some process that doesn't work, you run it on something that does work. It doesn't matter how many fancy processes are named and marketed out there if they don't work for you. The base concept of Scrum isn't any different from the base concepts of feedback loops and self-improvement; but if you call it feedback loops and self-improvement people don't really want it. That's where that marketing bs comes in, and the whole 'certified' nonsense. You make your units of work as clear as possible, you make them small enough so you have an idea how things are going and you measure periodically to ensure you're not blindsided by human flaws all the time.

choeger 6y ago

> The point of a methodology isn't to follow the methodology, In scrum, it is. Scrum was developed for managers to distract from the fact that they know nothing about software. So the methodology is all there is. Go ahead, ask a (non developer) scrum master about why there need to be cross functional teams, when 80% of your work never crosses the component boundary. Or go ask them who priorizes bug fixing (do this when PO, Ops, and customer care share the same room, hilarious!).

oneplane 6y ago
I'm not sure what managers have to do with scrum here. A manager is a person that insulates business from the execution on a non-functional level. Perhaps this is a difference in where you work (the company, the culture, the country), but here a manager is just someone who has the job of making sure there are no obstructions and people have what they need and don't get shifted around too much. Priorities are made based in input from owners, users and developers, and cross-functional teams are something that you do in a SIG, not in a development team. Maybe SCRUM (R) as a commercial idea has a lot of things it wants you do to, but that's not really why you'd even consider something; you consider something because it might help you or clarify something for others, and for novices it can be great if you don't have the experience, skills, insight or level of thinking to come up with a self-improving process by yourself.

a_imho 6y ago

The point of a methodology isn't to follow the methodology Then what's the point? If you cherry pick whatever you feel like, then why call it Scrum? There are people who benefit from Scrum but they are mainly not developers.

oneplane 6y ago
You give a set of ideas a name so that you can refer to that set. You also don't run your processes based on some process that doesn't work, you run it on something that does work. It doesn't matter how many fancy processes are named and marketed out there if they don't work for you. The base concept of Scrum isn't any different from the base concepts of feedback loops and self-improvement; but if you call it feedback loops and self-improvement people don't really want it. That's where that marketing bs comes in, and the whole 'certified' nonsense. You make your units of work as clear as possible, you make them small enough so you have an idea how things are going and you measure periodically to ensure you're not blindsided by human flaws all the time.