4 ms·

The term scrum comes from rugby, and it has nothing to do with organization. It's literally when something goes wrong, pack everyone together and get the ball m

The term scrum comes from rugby, and it has nothing to do with organization. It's literally when something goes wrong, pack everyone together and get the ball moving again. Symbolically, obviously, ball=project. The problem, like everything these days, is corporatism. Things have been added to the old development model to create positions for knowledgeless managers to do nothing and make money. Agile means fast without preparation. That name no longer reflects the model. These days, businesses have become so ritualistic to maintain power structure that they're inefficient, and morale is low. It gets to an unsustainable point and fails, meaning mass layoffs and restructuring, or the organization itself going down.

klysm 3y ago
Appeal-to-etymology is an especially weak form of argument - the origin from rugby doesn't matter.
- Tao3300 3y ago
  If you aren't jamming your head between your teammates' thighs, you are doing scrum wrong!
- ssrc 3y ago
  You are right, but in this case I have some sympathy for the argument. If all the technical terms in one methodology (scrum, sprint, velocity, commitment, ...) look like they were chosen not in good faith, well...
beachy 3y ago
The real purpose of the scrum in rugby is to tie up half of the players (the forwards - the backs are not in the scrum) when restarting play. Literally to remove the forwards from the play after a restart, by having them all bound together with their arms twisted around each other. Then, when the ball pops out, the field of play is nice and empty for a few seconds and some running rugby can take place, while the forwards slowly untangle themselves from the scrum. To translate to software engineering and agile, if scrum is taking half of the team's developers and tieing them up and preventing them from doing any work, then scrum is working exactly as intended.
- leejo 3y ago
  To expand the analogy further the scrum, in modern rugby, is the worst part of the game and has gone through several iterations the last couple of decades to reform it as it often ends in a stalemate or arbitrary penalty to one side (as good as a coin flip), or worse: a head injury. The approach has seen the game settle with "Crouch, Bind, Set", which seems to be a good compromise. And yet the hooker always, always ALWAYS, puts the ball in crooked and yet never gets called up on it. In other words, it's all a big waste of time and energy. (We're using agile at work, daily standups and retros, and it seems to be working)
  - pluies 3y ago
    You're in a lot of trouble if your _hooker_ is feeding the scrum!
    - leejo 3y ago
      Gah! Brain, I was thinking about which player usually strikes the ball first (hooker) rather than who feeds the scrum (scrum-half). Point still stands though I don't think I've seen a straight feed in years, at least in the Six Nations matches.

klysm 3y ago

Appeal-to-etymology is an especially weak form of argument - the origin from rugby doesn't matter.

Tao3300 3y ago
If you aren't jamming your head between your teammates' thighs, you are doing scrum wrong!
ssrc 3y ago
You are right, but in this case I have some sympathy for the argument. If all the technical terms in one methodology (scrum, sprint, velocity, commitment, ...) look like they were chosen not in good faith, well...

beachy 3y ago

The real purpose of the scrum in rugby is to tie up half of the players (the forwards - the backs are not in the scrum) when restarting play. Literally to remove the forwards from the play after a restart, by having them all bound together with their arms twisted around each other. Then, when the ball pops out, the field of play is nice and empty for a few seconds and some running rugby can take place, while the forwards slowly untangle themselves from the scrum. To translate to software engineering and agile, if scrum is taking half of the team's developers and tieing them up and preventing them from doing any work, then scrum is working exactly as intended.

leejo 3y ago
To expand the analogy further the scrum, in modern rugby, is the worst part of the game and has gone through several iterations the last couple of decades to reform it as it often ends in a stalemate or arbitrary penalty to one side (as good as a coin flip), or worse: a head injury. The approach has seen the game settle with "Crouch, Bind, Set", which seems to be a good compromise. And yet the hooker always, always ALWAYS, puts the ball in crooked and yet never gets called up on it. In other words, it's all a big waste of time and energy. (We're using agile at work, daily standups and retros, and it seems to be working)
- pluies 3y ago
  You're in a lot of trouble if your _hooker_ is feeding the scrum!
  - leejo 3y ago
    Gah! Brain, I was thinking about which player usually strikes the ball first (hooker) rather than who feeds the scrum (scrum-half). Point still stands though I don't think I've seen a straight feed in years, at least in the Six Nations matches.