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> The consumer lending company told The Register that its plan was to eliminate its "Agile" job family and integrate staff there into "existing engineering and

> The consumer lending company told The Register that its plan was to eliminate its "Agile" job family and integrate staff there into "existing engineering and product manager roles." Do we dare dream?

xwolfi 4y ago
Funnily enough my company started an agile reorg last year, and it's going as well as you can imagine. Cant wait for the de-agiling next phase where we can go back to having 4 matrix managers instead of 5...
xwdv 4y ago
I can’t wait to see these scrum master charlatans eliminated from most companies.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  A scrum master was one of the most useless people I’ve ever worked with. Not a product or project manager because they didn’t know the domain. Didn’t know all that much about building software because they didn’t have any skills. Devs were still writing and moving tickets around so they basically did zero productive work.
  - 56friends 4y ago
    My team was forced to invite a scrum master to several planning meetings. She sat quietly, observed the process, and then a few weeks later disappeared without a trace. We didn’t get any feedback from her or the org. Still not sure what that was about.
    - somehnguy 4y ago
      Wow, I had almost the exact same experience with my team! The only reason I don’t think we work together is that ours was a he. Still no idea what that was about, and it was never brought up again.
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    When this is done, probably after the next fad takes hold, I want a grim and thorough post-mortem of Agile, from its naive utopian vision to the various parasites the ecosystem attracted, down to the disillusionment and tears. I want names and I want shame. I want the nasty cultist tendencies exposed for everyone to see and hopefully (ha!) learn from. Perhaps not post-mortem, perhaps vivisection, so that a mirror could be held up to the abdominal cavity so that Agile could at last see the teratomas lurking inside of it since shortly after its conception, before the whole thing flickers out. The kindest interpretation one could offer is that it was a starry-eyed conception of how programming teams could constantly kick the blame-ball back to the stakeholders, as if the routine assignment of fault were somehow reasonable and rational in organizations, which it is not. At its worst, it looked like a solid grift, something that would last for several years as long as you kept smiling and promising.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      There's a pretty simple generic form of it: {thing} is something we can pay money for, without making real changes or learning new information, to tell investors and competitors we're part of {new fad} Big-A Agile (as marketed, certified, and hired for) is that for little-a agile (the manifesto and cultural practice). It also describes most consultant trends. The root of it is the realization that nobody in positions of power wants to change or admit they don't know something. Highly structured Agile implementations promise to deliver agile without requiring either of those things of anyone in power, which is why they're CTO-down driven: hire for new roles, nod when report are presented, and pat each other on the back at how progressive your company is. It's management attempting to feign involvement at a lower level, without really putting in the effort to do so productively.
      - dijit 4y ago
        its like this with many things. DevOps - and the litany of industry darlings who have as many (conflicting) definitions as there are shades of the rainbow. Cloud - or, the people whos only role is to understand at a high level what cloud offerings exist. DE&I - more insidious as it is a noble and worthwhile endeavour, but constantly gets taken over by people who bully others and/or grows huge
- winphone1974 4y ago
  This can actually be an unfair characterization: my company required some developers, who tended to be the stronger technical leaders, become certified scrum masters for their respective teams. Is hate to lose them all
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    People who are scrum masters as part of being a senior/lead engineer aren't really the problem. And it's possible some dedicated scrum masters could simply drop into the somewhat similar role of technical program manager.
- abledon 4y ago
  grug happy shaman ritual loosing power in org
rado 4y ago
Nature is healing
denton-scratch 4y ago
I learned something like "agile" from two guys that had worked with Ward Cunningham. That was useful; but it was also useful that they moved on after they'd trained the team. It sounds nuts to have an Agile job-family; I don't even know what that means. But hiring an Agile consultant for a few months can be transformative. [Edit] I think it's worth noting that neither of these two guys functioned as a "scrummaster" - they sometimes ran the scrum, sometimes it was other people. Even I did it once. They both coded, and paired with roughly eveyone. They were both rather heavy, for my taste, but I learned a huge amount from them.

xwolfi 4y ago

Funnily enough my company started an agile reorg last year, and it's going as well as you can imagine. Cant wait for the de-agiling next phase where we can go back to having 4 matrix managers instead of 5...

xwdv 4y ago

I can’t wait to see these scrum master charlatans eliminated from most companies.

coffeebeqn 4y ago
A scrum master was one of the most useless people I’ve ever worked with. Not a product or project manager because they didn’t know the domain. Didn’t know all that much about building software because they didn’t have any skills. Devs were still writing and moving tickets around so they basically did zero productive work.
- 56friends 4y ago
  My team was forced to invite a scrum master to several planning meetings. She sat quietly, observed the process, and then a few weeks later disappeared without a trace. We didn’t get any feedback from her or the org. Still not sure what that was about.
  - somehnguy 4y ago
    Wow, I had almost the exact same experience with my team! The only reason I don’t think we work together is that ours was a he. Still no idea what that was about, and it was never brought up again.
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  When this is done, probably after the next fad takes hold, I want a grim and thorough post-mortem of Agile, from its naive utopian vision to the various parasites the ecosystem attracted, down to the disillusionment and tears. I want names and I want shame. I want the nasty cultist tendencies exposed for everyone to see and hopefully (ha!) learn from. Perhaps not post-mortem, perhaps vivisection, so that a mirror could be held up to the abdominal cavity so that Agile could at last see the teratomas lurking inside of it since shortly after its conception, before the whole thing flickers out. The kindest interpretation one could offer is that it was a starry-eyed conception of how programming teams could constantly kick the blame-ball back to the stakeholders, as if the routine assignment of fault were somehow reasonable and rational in organizations, which it is not. At its worst, it looked like a solid grift, something that would last for several years as long as you kept smiling and promising.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    There's a pretty simple generic form of it: {thing} is something we can pay money for, without making real changes or learning new information, to tell investors and competitors we're part of {new fad} Big-A Agile (as marketed, certified, and hired for) is that for little-a agile (the manifesto and cultural practice). It also describes most consultant trends. The root of it is the realization that nobody in positions of power wants to change or admit they don't know something. Highly structured Agile implementations promise to deliver agile without requiring either of those things of anyone in power, which is why they're CTO-down driven: hire for new roles, nod when report are presented, and pat each other on the back at how progressive your company is. It's management attempting to feign involvement at a lower level, without really putting in the effort to do so productively.
    - dijit 4y ago
      its like this with many things. DevOps - and the litany of industry darlings who have as many (conflicting) definitions as there are shades of the rainbow. Cloud - or, the people whos only role is to understand at a high level what cloud offerings exist. DE&I - more insidious as it is a noble and worthwhile endeavour, but constantly gets taken over by people who bully others and/or grows huge
winphone1974 4y ago
This can actually be an unfair characterization: my company required some developers, who tended to be the stronger technical leaders, become certified scrum masters for their respective teams. Is hate to lose them all
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  People who are scrum masters as part of being a senior/lead engineer aren't really the problem. And it's possible some dedicated scrum masters could simply drop into the somewhat similar role of technical program manager.
abledon 4y ago
grug happy shaman ritual loosing power in org

rado 4y ago

Nature is healing

denton-scratch 4y ago

I learned something like "agile" from two guys that had worked with Ward Cunningham. That was useful; but it was also useful that they moved on after they'd trained the team. It sounds nuts to have an Agile job-family; I don't even know what that means. But hiring an Agile consultant for a few months can be transformative. [Edit] I think it's worth noting that neither of these two guys functioned as a "scrummaster" - they sometimes ran the scrum, sometimes it was other people. Even I did it once. They both coded, and paired with roughly eveyone. They were both rather heavy, for my taste, but I learned a huge amount from them.