4 ms·

Not sure if this is supposed to be sarcasm, but only from the direction of "lock the developers in a room and look what surfaces after half a year". Picking wh

by wink 2y ago

Not sure if this is supposed to be sarcasm, but only from the direction of "lock the developers in a room and look what surfaces after half a year". Picking what to work on for [time] without external additions is a pretty good improvement over getting new assignments daily. Or maybe you're just doing it wrong, I'm not here to defend anything codified in Agile, I'm just saying that elements of what most people call scrum has been the best I've seen in over 20 years. Maybe I just missed the days of locking yourself in your single office.

p_l 2y ago
I suspect it's more about the way many people experience "scrum". The basic building blocks can actually work great, it's often how they are executed and how many places go very much micromanagement wrapped in agile's skin while also instituting lots and lots of meetings - total opposite of what both Agile and XP advocated. Some of the best agile/scrum I ever worked under came from "Scrum master" who explicitly stated that one of his jobs was to see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team.
- exe34 2y ago
  > see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team. unfortunately from my experience, "what works" can vary wildly from person to person. One person wants to be given a task and left alone to understand it and write some throwaway code as part of the understanding process. another person wants to bikeshed it to death first before letting you touch any code. so the first person has to hide the work on the prototype and pretend to come up with the insights for the first time during the bikeshedding session.
  - p_l 2y ago
    Which is why their job was to figure out a model for the team. This specific team. Sometimes you can compromise, sometimes you can figure a proper allocation of resources, sometimes you can part amicably instead of murderously.
- pydry 2y ago
  Scrum is a bit too proscriptive to allow for that. One of the things that "works" is killing sprints, for instance, but scrum isn't scrum without a sprint.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > "Scrum master" who explicitly stated that one of his jobs was to see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team. Ironically, if I were to give one-sentence summary of what the idea behind Agile is, it would be exactly that: "see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team". Running through that feedback loop rapidly is the whole point of Agile, and the one thing that actually distinguishes it from typical management methods at the time (as opposed to silly comparisons with "waterfall" boogeyman that never even existed). Everything else is process - the thing that's supposed to be sculpted. Focusing on that is committing the sin explicitly called out in the Manifesto - putting process over people.
nottorp 2y ago
> of what most people call scrum has been the best I've seen in over 20 years If you're phrasing it like that I've been doing agile since way before anyone invented the term. But that's only 10% of cult agile, which is what is practiced generally.
pydry 2y ago
Agile seems to be used to refer both to a form of cult and a form of software development interchangeably and I think it's too late to fix that.

by wink 2y ago

p_l 2y ago

I suspect it's more about the way many people experience "scrum". The basic building blocks can actually work great, it's often how they are executed and how many places go very much micromanagement wrapped in agile's skin while also instituting lots and lots of meetings - total opposite of what both Agile and XP advocated. Some of the best agile/scrum I ever worked under came from "Scrum master" who explicitly stated that one of his jobs was to see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team.

exe34 2y ago
> see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team. unfortunately from my experience, "what works" can vary wildly from person to person. One person wants to be given a task and left alone to understand it and write some throwaway code as part of the understanding process. another person wants to bikeshed it to death first before letting you touch any code. so the first person has to hide the work on the prototype and pretend to come up with the insights for the first time during the bikeshedding session.
- p_l 2y ago
  Which is why their job was to figure out a model for the team. This specific team. Sometimes you can compromise, sometimes you can figure a proper allocation of resources, sometimes you can part amicably instead of murderously.
pydry 2y ago
Scrum is a bit too proscriptive to allow for that. One of the things that "works" is killing sprints, for instance, but scrum isn't scrum without a sprint.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> "Scrum master" who explicitly stated that one of his jobs was to see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team. Ironically, if I were to give one-sentence summary of what the idea behind Agile is, it would be exactly that: "see what approaches work and change what doesn't work for the team". Running through that feedback loop rapidly is the whole point of Agile, and the one thing that actually distinguishes it from typical management methods at the time (as opposed to silly comparisons with "waterfall" boogeyman that never even existed). Everything else is process - the thing that's supposed to be sculpted. Focusing on that is committing the sin explicitly called out in the Manifesto - putting process over people.

nottorp 2y ago

> of what most people call scrum has been the best I've seen in over 20 years If you're phrasing it like that I've been doing agile since way before anyone invented the term. But that's only 10% of cult agile, which is what is practiced generally.

pydry 2y ago

Agile seems to be used to refer both to a form of cult and a form of software development interchangeably and I think it's too late to fix that.