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My most informative experience was had at this huge auction company that I was doing frontend on. At one point, I was working on what we'd now call a component,

My most informative experience was had at this huge auction company that I was doing frontend on. At one point, I was working on what we'd now call a component, but was at that time manually created dom elements generated with a very long series of logic branches that depended on a number of external, possibly async conditions. It was extremely hard and time consuming to test and keep all of the possible conditions loaded into my consciousness with all of the chatter in the surrounding space and some fuckhead making sales calls on his phone and typing on his mechanical keyboard—because y'know, everyone's gotta be in the same room—meanwhile the product owner would come over to add new requirements while I was trying to focus and then the scrum master would come over to ask why I wasn't done yet. This went on until my productivity and motivation ground to a halt, I burnt out, got depressed, and got fired. However, when I started at the company, it was surprisingly fine. I worked with two other guys collaboratively on some tricky frontend issues, which we solved, and it was fine.

t43562 3y ago
scrum masters should only bother you at the standup. They also shouldn't add requirements. So .... the one you were dealing with was just an average bullshitter pretending to do scrum.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  The product owner was typically changing requirements, Scrum Master I think realized they had no functional role and tried to be a busybody. Either way, it was awful, and it was looked down upon to try and find some peace and quiet to actually get things done.
  - t43562 3y ago
    Well, a sprint is a contract - people are not allowed to change the deal in the middle and if they are then the PO isn't doing their job. They're really there to defend the team from pesky customers and prioritise work so that you DO have peace and quiet. I get that this often doesn't work because individuals don't really grasp their function properly and don't defend or don't prioritise and then that part of the scheme cannot work. Sometimes the company structure makes the POs too scared to standup. IMO that would be a problem without scrum.
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      I don't think much of that is true at all if the result of their role is supposed to be remotely inspired by Agile, but yes it's the structure screwing it up and individuals just following along.

t43562 3y ago

scrum masters should only bother you at the standup. They also shouldn't add requirements. So .... the one you were dealing with was just an average bullshitter pretending to do scrum.

brailsafe 3y ago
The product owner was typically changing requirements, Scrum Master I think realized they had no functional role and tried to be a busybody. Either way, it was awful, and it was looked down upon to try and find some peace and quiet to actually get things done.
- t43562 3y ago
  Well, a sprint is a contract - people are not allowed to change the deal in the middle and if they are then the PO isn't doing their job. They're really there to defend the team from pesky customers and prioritise work so that you DO have peace and quiet. I get that this often doesn't work because individuals don't really grasp their function properly and don't defend or don't prioritise and then that part of the scheme cannot work. Sometimes the company structure makes the POs too scared to standup. IMO that would be a problem without scrum.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    I don't think much of that is true at all if the result of their role is supposed to be remotely inspired by Agile, but yes it's the structure screwing it up and individuals just following along.