5 ms·

A big factor for burnout, at least for me, is the never ending treadmill that is Agile. There are zillions of different things people call Agile, but the core o

A big factor for burnout, at least for me, is the never ending treadmill that is Agile. There are zillions of different things people call Agile, but the core of nearly all of them is the never ending series of Sprints (side note: I hate that the industry has settled on two week sprints, they make them so unbearable, 1 month is the best sprint, imo). I like a lot of the thing Agile thinking has brought to the toolbox, and before Agile there was a lot of horror and suffering, but what I do miss from that primordial time was when you finished a project you could stop and think and breath for a while. For a few days, even several weeks. Just stop and tinker and think about what you had just done, and what you want to do. When you actually train for running and other athletic activities, and you actually sprint, there is a recovery period where you let your body regain and recover from the effort. It improves performance and it improves your training. We either need a recovery period built into Agile, or, my preference, get rid of Sprints. Actually, keep sprints around but turn them into a more fitting analogy. Infrequent periods where you focus and work harder on something. "Ok, it feels like we don't have traction on project X, let's do a two week sprint where we push aside all other concerns, cancel all meetings, and just focus on the project." Right now it feels like I haven't had time to stop and think for 18+ months, it doesn't help to have my family sitting in the house with me full time. No quiet periods, no reflecting periods of recovery.

balefrost 5y ago
This is exactly the source of my frustration as well. I'm naturally inclined towards iterative development, frequent steering, and interacting with the people that will actually use the stuff that I'm building. I believe in those aspects of the agile mindset. What has worn me down over the past few years is the constant refrain that we are "behind" and "don't have time" for a lot of things that appear to me to be essential. We've been in a mode where we don't really have time to explore options. And once we've made a decision, we rarely revisit it even as information changes. I don't think this has anything to do with agile per se. One could argue that it's Scrum's fault, but even then I don't think you can lay the blame directly there. The point of sprints is to create frequent steering points. As new information comes up, let's make sure that we're still pursuing the correct course. But sprints can easily be misunderstood to be frequent deadlines that must be hit. There's some value there, but I think that misses the mark somewhat. I think a lot of it stems from a conflict of personality styles. From what I've seen, some people like the treadmill - it gives them direction, purpose, and energy. But for somebody like me, that treadmill is more of a grindstone.

balefrost 5y ago

This is exactly the source of my frustration as well. I'm naturally inclined towards iterative development, frequent steering, and interacting with the people that will actually use the stuff that I'm building. I believe in those aspects of the agile mindset. What has worn me down over the past few years is the constant refrain that we are "behind" and "don't have time" for a lot of things that appear to me to be essential. We've been in a mode where we don't really have time to explore options. And once we've made a decision, we rarely revisit it even as information changes. I don't think this has anything to do with agile per se. One could argue that it's Scrum's fault, but even then I don't think you can lay the blame directly there. The point of sprints is to create frequent steering points. As new information comes up, let's make sure that we're still pursuing the correct course. But sprints can easily be misunderstood to be frequent deadlines that must be hit. There's some value there, but I think that misses the mark somewhat. I think a lot of it stems from a conflict of personality styles. From what I've seen, some people like the treadmill - it gives them direction, purpose, and energy. But for somebody like me, that treadmill is more of a grindstone.