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This is a No True Scotsman argument. The guy enumerated a list of ways scrum failed in his experience; it's always interesting to hear honestly about failure mo

This is a No True Scotsman argument. The guy enumerated a list of ways scrum failed in his experience; it's always interesting to hear honestly about failure modes from people who have actually used something a lot in their work.

psunavy03 3y ago
It's interesting to hear about failure modes, and anyone whose job it is to teach stuff like this is interested in hearing about failure modes. It's the taking of one person's experience and extending it to encompass everything that's wrong. Obviously the people charged with implementing this in OP's company are doing it wrong. That doesn't mean it's OK to insinuate that everyone who ever tries to implement Scrum or Agile is doing it wrong. For every clueless toxic manager who doesn't understand how to use Agile correctly, there's an egotistical or lazy dev who also wants to throw what the Brits would call a spanner in the works for purely personal reasons. But to call it a No True Scotsman argument is a lazy rebuttal which won't engage with the argument. There are plenty of shitty Agile practitioners, and no one is trying to dispute this.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > For every clueless toxic manager who doesn't understand how to use Agile correctly Anecdata Of One: I have worked at many places since 2005 and the most successful projects have been those without any Agile[1]/Scrum imposed by management. In contrast, the places with the worst outcomes[2] have all had distinct Agile/Scrum imposed by micro-managers[3]. [1] Plenty of places with iterative development but solely due to the nature of the work (changes required by external QA, experiments, etc.), not imposed. [2] Software quality and speed of development-wise. They're all still alive and limping along despite the horrific nature of their internal systems. [3] Who have always been there in a place with Agile/Scrum. Only once in a place without. I don't think it's coincidental.
theshrike79 3y ago
The same thing works the other way. People see and experience shit Scrum and then they No True Scotsman it to mean that all Scrum must be shit. It seems to me that most American software companies use Cargo Cult Scrum. They basically take the terms and maybe read a blog about the processes and just wing it from there. The only way an Agile/Scrum process works if you bring in a consulting company that's expensive enough to make even the top brass buy into it. You can theoretically try to bring it in from the ground up, but it's really hard to do Agile when the rest of the company is either waterfall or flying by the seat of their pants.
- throwuxiytayq 3y ago
  Sheesh, no wonder everyone is doing it wrong.

psunavy03 3y ago

It's interesting to hear about failure modes, and anyone whose job it is to teach stuff like this is interested in hearing about failure modes. It's the taking of one person's experience and extending it to encompass everything that's wrong. Obviously the people charged with implementing this in OP's company are doing it wrong. That doesn't mean it's OK to insinuate that everyone who ever tries to implement Scrum or Agile is doing it wrong. For every clueless toxic manager who doesn't understand how to use Agile correctly, there's an egotistical or lazy dev who also wants to throw what the Brits would call a spanner in the works for purely personal reasons. But to call it a No True Scotsman argument is a lazy rebuttal which won't engage with the argument. There are plenty of shitty Agile practitioners, and no one is trying to dispute this.

zimpenfish 3y ago
> For every clueless toxic manager who doesn't understand how to use Agile correctly Anecdata Of One: I have worked at many places since 2005 and the most successful projects have been those without any Agile[1]/Scrum imposed by management. In contrast, the places with the worst outcomes[2] have all had distinct Agile/Scrum imposed by micro-managers[3]. [1] Plenty of places with iterative development but solely due to the nature of the work (changes required by external QA, experiments, etc.), not imposed. [2] Software quality and speed of development-wise. They're all still alive and limping along despite the horrific nature of their internal systems. [3] Who have always been there in a place with Agile/Scrum. Only once in a place without. I don't think it's coincidental.

theshrike79 3y ago

The same thing works the other way. People see and experience shit Scrum and then they No True Scotsman it to mean that all Scrum must be shit. It seems to me that most American software companies use Cargo Cult Scrum. They basically take the terms and maybe read a blog about the processes and just wing it from there. The only way an Agile/Scrum process works if you bring in a consulting company that's expensive enough to make even the top brass buy into it. You can theoretically try to bring it in from the ground up, but it's really hard to do Agile when the rest of the company is either waterfall or flying by the seat of their pants.

throwuxiytayq 3y ago
Sheesh, no wonder everyone is doing it wrong.