I understand where the author is coming from and I’ll be the first to tell you that Agile/Scrum has become a monster, unrecognizable from the original goals. I’

I understand where the author is coming from and I’ll be the first to tell you that Agile/Scrum has become a monster, unrecognizable from the original goals. I’ve worked places where it’s treated like a religion (don’t question anything, just follow the system) and it quickly becomes a waste of time. That said, I’m not aware of a better system than 1-2 week sprints where a team pulls in tasks from a prioritized backlog. The author says something to the effect of “we are all adults here” but that makes me question where the author has worked. Almost everywhere I’ve worked there have been a few (normally minority) people who absolutely do not behave like adults. If you have a company full of self-starters who don’t need any checking-up on then maybe standups aren’t needed but even then, I find them useful (as in IC and as a manager) to keep up with what people are working on. Being fully remote it is useful for quick questions or an easy way to present a new idea/way of doing something. Yes we have Slack and async communication but let’s not pretend that they are complete replacements for hearing and seeing each other. Some ideas are harder to communicate over text. Lastly I find sprints to be a way to protect the team from ever-shifting priorities from the business side. I’ve been places where the priorities change almost daily which can be stressful and leave you constantly uncertain of what you should be working on. Sprints help prevent that in my experience. Business can change priorities at their whim but the development team will only reevaluate them on a weekly/bi-weekly basis. I’ll never say “this system is the pinnacle of software development” but it’s the best I’ve used, or at least better than anything else I’ve tried. But I’m always open to new ways to manage projects.