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I think SCRUM has lost its roots. --- To quote men far better than I: https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/ Manifesto for Agile Software D

by ilc 3y ago

I think SCRUM has lost its roots. --- To quote men far better than I: https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/ Manifesto for Agile Software Development We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. --- If your process delivers on the above. It is agile. If not. It isn't. And personally: I prefer agile as stated above, but I have yet to find a SCRUM team I'd work on.

finnthehuman 3y ago
The agile manifesto is a nonfalsafiable commentary on what was the status quo decades ago. The only possible response to complaints about anything done under the guise of agile is that the practitioner did it wrong. In a status quo where everyone is trying (or at least claiming) it as a guiding principle, any actionable advice is only the interpretation various people bring to their reading of the scriptures. In these cases, the utility of the manifesto is nil.
- ilc 3y ago
  It is a commentary as valid today, as it was when I started and wrote a few articles on the c2 wiki. If you all agree on the manifesto.. at least you can ask questions, and then see how it all fits together. IMHO: If the question "why" is outlawed, I'll find another place to work.
  - mannykannot 3y ago
    We don't have to agree on the manifesto to ask questions - in fact, we might well get better questions if there is a certain amount of skepticism.
- joshlemer 3y ago
  I am seeing a parallel to modern day socialists/communists. Despite hundreds of instances of real adherents to the philosophy really trying in earnest to achieve communism in a wide variety of cultures, geographies and situations, it never works. We know why it works and economists can tell you exactly why it doesn't work. Yet, every new case of communism's failure is chalked up to not being "real communism" or being "bastardized by dictators".
  - feoren 3y ago
    > economists can tell you exactly why it doesn't work Can they now? It seems to me that the more "exact" an economist gets, the more they should be ignored. Economics is a fiendishly difficult discipline and anyone who claims exactitude should be setting off your B.S. meter.
  - boxed 3y ago
    There are parallels to Christianity or Islam too: if you don't 100% own the brand, it will be coopted by people who will redefine it and confuse everyone. Only the Catholic Church really controls its own brand and can actually define what it even is. Same as with REST for that matter.
  - boxed 3y ago
    The big difference to communism is that the Agile Manifesto was written from personal experience of having working teams. The Communist Manifesto was wild speculation about how society could maybe work. I have worked following the Agile Manifesto for soon 13 years and it works very well. No surprise really, as it's just treating everyone like adults.
- boxed 3y ago
  > The agile manifesto is a nonfalsafiable [sic] commentary on what was the status quo decades ago. It's not a commentary. So.. you kinda failed already on that point. It's also not pretending to be a scientific hypothesis in the first place so "unfalsifiable" is a weird attack as it's just missing the point.. again.
  - mcluck 3y ago
    It's a commentary in that it was written in response to the practices of the day. It's nonfalsifiable because it can't be incorrect. No matter what you do, you can claim it didn't match what the authors intended
    - boxed 3y ago
      In the same way as the Golden Rule is non-falsifiable? I guess... but that in no way takes away from the truth of the Golden Rule.
      - mcluck 3y ago
        It's very easy to go against the golden rule. I don't want people to scream obscenities at me so I don't. If I scream obscenities at people and am upset when people respond in kind, it's clear I violated the golden rule
        boxed 3y ago
        That made no sense.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  One solution is to avoid using the word "scrum". Since nobody can really agree on exactly what it means the word is worse than meaningless. The word serves only as a conversation trap; many good conversations devolve into defining what "scrum" means--somehow we went from a meaningful conversation to endlessly arguing over the definition of a single word. The polite way to say this is something like "people have many ideas about what scrum is, can you explain what you mean without using the word scrum, it would help my understanding".
fatnoah 3y ago
> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Last year I joined a company as a VP of Engineering and the first thing I did was to look at all of the meticulously crafted Jira workflows for tickets moving from New to Done, and all of the state transitions in between. There was an amazing level of thought and craft put into those workflows. I then completely obliterated them and just defined states and let any issue be moved into any state. There was much rejoicing and nothing lost from the process, since the teams regulated themselves to make sure things were documented, code reviewed, etc.
- tguvot 3y ago
  ymmv. i was in similar situation and developers moved tickets to "terminal" states without actually trying to address issues, won't write documentation, etc. so state transitions had to be added and gates put in place. it's always joy to work with teams of adults who can self-regulate. but when it's not what you have... as small example: i had 2 developers telling to vp of engineering that they not going to implement some functionality because they don't see the need in it. For record, this functionality was needed PS. i described in more details below
  - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    Did you have a discussion with those engineers as to why they thought it wasn’t needed? Presumably there was a reason, it’s not always (or usually) the case that VP of eng knows more than the ICs.
    - tguvot 3y ago
      i had veery long discussions with them for few weeks or so. i was wearing multiple engineering hats. vp was technical and knew what and why was needed. vp was brought in for enforcement action when it started to become bottleneck for other teams. after VP performed "enforcement" they gave estimation of 3 people for 3 months of work. And they wanted to implement half of the requirements and not in a way that were specified. I went to guy next room, his estimation was 1 week of coding and 1 week of unit/testing/integration/documentation. He ended up been the one who did it the bottom line that they just didn't want to work. on different occasion same two developers during review of requirements literally said "but to implement this functionality we would have to write a code/work". Just for a context, this was company where company had gifts for 20 and 25 years anniversary of employment. And this is company that makes software for living. (Not the blue company.) PS. Just for a more complete picture, that company had "agile methodology department" that had developed internally sprint/ticket tracking system and wiki. those systems weren't linked so you couldn't cross reference things. Project that I was hired to do was given exception from many policies so I decided to get jira/confluence, which despite been universally despised here were light years ahead of what company had. In process I failed to get approvals from it, information security, agile and some other departments. At the end (after 3 months) general manger personally approved it and took personal responsibility for any breaches. yet, 1 year later I got visit from internal audit who weren't happy that I spent money on system that duplicates functionality of existing system. PPS. the really funny part, i interviewed with google and was asked to tell how i had organizational challenge or something and how I managed to overcome it. I told this story (about buying jira) and after doing it was asked if i could do something different. I answered that given organizational structure it was the only way to approach. Interviewers verdict was that I am not humble enough because I can't admit that something could be done differently. Hence i am not googley enough and therefor "strong no hire"
boesboes 3y ago
Disclaimer, this is only half serious: It is a tale as old as, well, at least as software management. We used to make software. Sometimes it went alright, sometimes not. Then someone wrote down a rough idea of different approaches to software projects and gave a simple example of a naive process on the first page. The managers went with that, because iterative stuff looked complicated. Then, after years of pain, some people wrote the agile manifesto, because it was clear that we were not on the right path. Then some marketing/sales/manager types saw it and figured 'how can we make money of this, without understanding it? Oh, and how can we get those pesky developers out of the room, they are always correcting me when I lying, eh, selling to the customer!'.. And thus we got scrum, it's process and tools over EVERYTHING, but in the color of agile. Not much different then the blackboard paradox I think. Can find it, but it goes like: A uni uses blackboard. Users rebel, adminstration caves and buys the new, user friendly blackboard alternative. Users settle down, the software get developed further, the company that makes it grows and starts to implement checkmark features for the admins that decide on purchasing. And thus the software becomes blackboard too.
LAC-Tech 3y ago
Reading the agile manifesto made me realise there's no 'pure agile' that can save us - agile was rotten from day one. "Welcome changing requirements, even late in development." after a decade in this industry words cannot express how foolish this is.
- dang 3y ago
  Ok, but can you please make your substantive points more thoughtfully? You broke several of the HN guidelines with this post. "Please don't fulminate." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - RayFrankenstein 3y ago
    Is AI being used to moderate comments now on HN? I ask because I don’t find this comment to be particularly moderation-worthy according to most modern standards of flamebait.
    - LAC-Tech 3y ago
      Yeah it wasn't my finest moment but I didn't think it was very out of place. I think moderation here is 'flag based' - ie if enough people flag something moderators step in.
      - dang 3y ago
        It did get flagged, so it may have been that. 1 day ago is much too long for me to remember!
    - dang 3y ago
      It wasn't particularly; but this is one of those flamey-ranty-generic topics that tends to always be the same. Naybe that was what got me.

by ilc 3y ago

finnthehuman 3y ago

The agile manifesto is a nonfalsafiable commentary on what was the status quo decades ago. The only possible response to complaints about anything done under the guise of agile is that the practitioner did it wrong. In a status quo where everyone is trying (or at least claiming) it as a guiding principle, any actionable advice is only the interpretation various people bring to their reading of the scriptures. In these cases, the utility of the manifesto is nil.

ilc 3y ago
It is a commentary as valid today, as it was when I started and wrote a few articles on the c2 wiki. If you all agree on the manifesto.. at least you can ask questions, and then see how it all fits together. IMHO: If the question "why" is outlawed, I'll find another place to work.
- mannykannot 3y ago
  We don't have to agree on the manifesto to ask questions - in fact, we might well get better questions if there is a certain amount of skepticism.
joshlemer 3y ago
I am seeing a parallel to modern day socialists/communists. Despite hundreds of instances of real adherents to the philosophy really trying in earnest to achieve communism in a wide variety of cultures, geographies and situations, it never works. We know why it works and economists can tell you exactly why it doesn't work. Yet, every new case of communism's failure is chalked up to not being "real communism" or being "bastardized by dictators".
- feoren 3y ago
  > economists can tell you exactly why it doesn't work Can they now? It seems to me that the more "exact" an economist gets, the more they should be ignored. Economics is a fiendishly difficult discipline and anyone who claims exactitude should be setting off your B.S. meter.
- boxed 3y ago
  There are parallels to Christianity or Islam too: if you don't 100% own the brand, it will be coopted by people who will redefine it and confuse everyone. Only the Catholic Church really controls its own brand and can actually define what it even is. Same as with REST for that matter.
- boxed 3y ago
  The big difference to communism is that the Agile Manifesto was written from personal experience of having working teams. The Communist Manifesto was wild speculation about how society could maybe work. I have worked following the Agile Manifesto for soon 13 years and it works very well. No surprise really, as it's just treating everyone like adults.
boxed 3y ago
> The agile manifesto is a nonfalsafiable [sic] commentary on what was the status quo decades ago. It's not a commentary. So.. you kinda failed already on that point. It's also not pretending to be a scientific hypothesis in the first place so "unfalsifiable" is a weird attack as it's just missing the point.. again.
- mcluck 3y ago
  It's a commentary in that it was written in response to the practices of the day. It's nonfalsifiable because it can't be incorrect. No matter what you do, you can claim it didn't match what the authors intended
  - boxed 3y ago
    In the same way as the Golden Rule is non-falsifiable? I guess... but that in no way takes away from the truth of the Golden Rule.
    - mcluck 3y ago
      It's very easy to go against the golden rule. I don't want people to scream obscenities at me so I don't. If I scream obscenities at people and am upset when people respond in kind, it's clear I violated the golden rule
      - boxed 3y ago
        That made no sense.
Buttons840 3y ago
One solution is to avoid using the word "scrum". Since nobody can really agree on exactly what it means the word is worse than meaningless. The word serves only as a conversation trap; many good conversations devolve into defining what "scrum" means--somehow we went from a meaningful conversation to endlessly arguing over the definition of a single word. The polite way to say this is something like "people have many ideas about what scrum is, can you explain what you mean without using the word scrum, it would help my understanding".

fatnoah 3y ago

> Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Last year I joined a company as a VP of Engineering and the first thing I did was to look at all of the meticulously crafted Jira workflows for tickets moving from New to Done, and all of the state transitions in between. There was an amazing level of thought and craft put into those workflows. I then completely obliterated them and just defined states and let any issue be moved into any state. There was much rejoicing and nothing lost from the process, since the teams regulated themselves to make sure things were documented, code reviewed, etc.

tguvot 3y ago
ymmv. i was in similar situation and developers moved tickets to "terminal" states without actually trying to address issues, won't write documentation, etc. so state transitions had to be added and gates put in place. it's always joy to work with teams of adults who can self-regulate. but when it's not what you have... as small example: i had 2 developers telling to vp of engineering that they not going to implement some functionality because they don't see the need in it. For record, this functionality was needed PS. i described in more details below
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  Did you have a discussion with those engineers as to why they thought it wasn’t needed? Presumably there was a reason, it’s not always (or usually) the case that VP of eng knows more than the ICs.
  - tguvot 3y ago
    i had veery long discussions with them for few weeks or so. i was wearing multiple engineering hats. vp was technical and knew what and why was needed. vp was brought in for enforcement action when it started to become bottleneck for other teams. after VP performed "enforcement" they gave estimation of 3 people for 3 months of work. And they wanted to implement half of the requirements and not in a way that were specified. I went to guy next room, his estimation was 1 week of coding and 1 week of unit/testing/integration/documentation. He ended up been the one who did it the bottom line that they just didn't want to work. on different occasion same two developers during review of requirements literally said "but to implement this functionality we would have to write a code/work". Just for a context, this was company where company had gifts for 20 and 25 years anniversary of employment. And this is company that makes software for living. (Not the blue company.) PS. Just for a more complete picture, that company had "agile methodology department" that had developed internally sprint/ticket tracking system and wiki. those systems weren't linked so you couldn't cross reference things. Project that I was hired to do was given exception from many policies so I decided to get jira/confluence, which despite been universally despised here were light years ahead of what company had. In process I failed to get approvals from it, information security, agile and some other departments. At the end (after 3 months) general manger personally approved it and took personal responsibility for any breaches. yet, 1 year later I got visit from internal audit who weren't happy that I spent money on system that duplicates functionality of existing system. PPS. the really funny part, i interviewed with google and was asked to tell how i had organizational challenge or something and how I managed to overcome it. I told this story (about buying jira) and after doing it was asked if i could do something different. I answered that given organizational structure it was the only way to approach. Interviewers verdict was that I am not humble enough because I can't admit that something could be done differently. Hence i am not googley enough and therefor "strong no hire"

boesboes 3y ago

Disclaimer, this is only half serious: It is a tale as old as, well, at least as software management. We used to make software. Sometimes it went alright, sometimes not. Then someone wrote down a rough idea of different approaches to software projects and gave a simple example of a naive process on the first page. The managers went with that, because iterative stuff looked complicated. Then, after years of pain, some people wrote the agile manifesto, because it was clear that we were not on the right path. Then some marketing/sales/manager types saw it and figured 'how can we make money of this, without understanding it? Oh, and how can we get those pesky developers out of the room, they are always correcting me when I lying, eh, selling to the customer!'.. And thus we got scrum, it's process and tools over EVERYTHING, but in the color of agile. Not much different then the blackboard paradox I think. Can find it, but it goes like: A uni uses blackboard. Users rebel, adminstration caves and buys the new, user friendly blackboard alternative. Users settle down, the software get developed further, the company that makes it grows and starts to implement checkmark features for the admins that decide on purchasing. And thus the software becomes blackboard too.

LAC-Tech 3y ago

Reading the agile manifesto made me realise there's no 'pure agile' that can save us - agile was rotten from day one. "Welcome changing requirements, even late in development." after a decade in this industry words cannot express how foolish this is.

dang 3y ago
Ok, but can you please make your substantive points more thoughtfully? You broke several of the HN guidelines with this post. "Please don't fulminate." "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- RayFrankenstein 3y ago
  Is AI being used to moderate comments now on HN? I ask because I don’t find this comment to be particularly moderation-worthy according to most modern standards of flamebait.
  - LAC-Tech 3y ago
    Yeah it wasn't my finest moment but I didn't think it was very out of place. I think moderation here is 'flag based' - ie if enough people flag something moderators step in.
    - dang 3y ago
      It did get flagged, so it may have been that. 1 day ago is much too long for me to remember!
  - dang 3y ago
    It wasn't particularly; but this is one of those flamey-ranty-generic topics that tends to always be the same. Naybe that was what got me.