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One near constant thing I notice is that hardly anyone (_especially_ scrum certified folk) recognises that scrum, by design, makes it self redundant. Most think

by Jenk 4y ago

One near constant thing I notice is that hardly anyone (_especially_ scrum certified folk) recognises that scrum, by design, makes it self redundant. Most think scrum is a final-state. A goal line. It's not. Scrum is a training/introductory agile framework. There is an evolution to scrum built right into the framework that transforms it into not-scrum. The framework encourages moving from the initial (and what most orgs think is the final state of scrum) "Type A" where the team work in isolated timeboxes, with downtime between for planning etc. through "Type B" with preparation(s) for upcoming sprints, and feedback from previous sprints, overlapping the current sprint, to "Type C" with complete "just-in-time process" transformation where doing any given ceremony is done on-demand. And, crucially, it encourages evolving _beyond_ this. Type C will be familiar to anyone practicing Kanban. Or dare I say, anyone with experience with "doing agile right" will have an experience matching what Type C describes.

civilized 4y ago
This helps me understand why this widely reviled thing, Scrum, might be useful. It separates planning and execution and tells you to do one at a time. Maybe that's useful for teams that are struggling to adaptively interweave the two. And maybe by mastering them separately, they could get a step closer to juggling them together.
- cuddlybacon 4y ago
  When I started my career, most teams at my company were doing waterfall. The team I was hired onto was one of a couple guinea pigs for scrum. The other teams would spend 6 weeks doing nothing but planning activities. After the planning was done, they'd do a 12 month dev cycle. Once that was done they would throw what they have over the fence for the QA cycle. That is the world scrum was introduced to. People already thought planning and separate and couldn't be mixed. Scrum dragged them closer to interweaving them. People resisted, saying it was reckless and unprofessional. They looked at this and thought "so the plan is we don't plan anymore? we just wing it?". I think Agile has won enough that perhaps many specific processes meant to bridge the gap are now dragging people away from being more Agile.
  - urthor 4y ago
    Really, I don't think that old world approach changed much with Scrum. The root cause is that most people are honestly not too amazing at this corporate teamwork thing. External frameworks like Scrum can improve things 10-20%, maybe.

by Jenk 4y ago

civilized 4y ago

This helps me understand why this widely reviled thing, Scrum, might be useful. It separates planning and execution and tells you to do one at a time. Maybe that's useful for teams that are struggling to adaptively interweave the two. And maybe by mastering them separately, they could get a step closer to juggling them together.

cuddlybacon 4y ago
When I started my career, most teams at my company were doing waterfall. The team I was hired onto was one of a couple guinea pigs for scrum. The other teams would spend 6 weeks doing nothing but planning activities. After the planning was done, they'd do a 12 month dev cycle. Once that was done they would throw what they have over the fence for the QA cycle. That is the world scrum was introduced to. People already thought planning and separate and couldn't be mixed. Scrum dragged them closer to interweaving them. People resisted, saying it was reckless and unprofessional. They looked at this and thought "so the plan is we don't plan anymore? we just wing it?". I think Agile has won enough that perhaps many specific processes meant to bridge the gap are now dragging people away from being more Agile.
- urthor 4y ago
  Really, I don't think that old world approach changed much with Scrum. The root cause is that most people are honestly not too amazing at this corporate teamwork thing. External frameworks like Scrum can improve things 10-20%, maybe.