Is Scrum Dead?
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- "Scrum Is A Cancer. Stop Doing Scrum!" In this video I share my thoughts on a post I read.
It was a post starting with "Scrum is a cancer" by Santiago @svpino. It was accompanied by this black and white image, screaming "Stop Doing Scrum".
You can find it here: / 1695806027256475777
Do we hate on #scrum now? Can it be that we are entering a post-Scrum era?
I stumbled upon Maarten Dalmijn's skeptical view on Scrum in his article "Scrum: Failure By Design?", stating that it "might be flawed by design".
Then there is also David Pereira's article "Sorry Scrum, the Game Might Be Over for You!"
First of all, there is no such thing as Scrum implementation. Scrum only exists as a concept in the Scrum Guide and the heads of Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland.
You will see how quickly the complaint about Scrum turns into a rant about wrongly implemented #storypoints
Enjoy!
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Another great video Maria! Indeed I share the same perspective. I love the teacher/language metaphor. I never thought about it that way. ❤❤❤
OMG Joan, thank you for the Aperols 💛💛💛 yeah, makes sense, right? We used to hate the classes at school just because we disliked the teachers 🤷♀
I responded to the Scrum is Cancer post on LinkedIn. It would have been much more interesting had he quoted the Scrum Guide.
What are the remedies he is suggesting? Let’s guess:
1. Drop the silly idea of story points! Great, not part of Scrum.
2. Get rid of Scrum of Scrums. Perfect, not part of scrum.
3. Let people focus on delivery, instead of going to “ceremonies” all day!
Sounds good. Firstly, no ceremonies in Scrum, so we should be good there. (Most people call them events now days). As for focusing on delivery, well under scrum the business sets us a goal for the next 2 weeks, then team works out how to deliver it. At the end, they show them what they did and then we collaborate on what’s next. So, all ears on what doesn’t work there, or a better alternative.
What is the answer really. I’m all up for new ways of working. And maybe a tweak to one process here, change the frequency of this event there. Great.
I’m hearing loads of complaining, about some mess of issues. Then going “Scrum sucks”.
Maybe poor management sucks? Maybe we should look there first.
This is great! Hundred percent agreed! A shame people don't know what Scrum is and then they complain about the things around it thinking that's it😅
I find a common reason for teams and managers hating Scrum is that people do not want to change, as in, do not want increased transparency for all; do not want to inspect and adapt the product every sprint and would rather waterfall it - designed up-front - because there are less meetings and developers in meetings means developers not writing code, when that's what their paid for - "Just build what we have designed for you, and if it isn't right in the given time you're fired."
This is actually very common, well, maybe except for the direct firing part. I guess in such organizartions Scrum is no more than a way to show "we do agile", while keeping the "command and control" approach.
@maria - you're a genius for fostering interesting conversations on your channel. I am seeing all sorts of lovely threads and interesting and funny directions evolving from the comments. @thx5001 - This is an interesting one you have mentioned about "developers not writing code". This was one of the problems identified in the Agile Manifesto about developers building the product right but not building the right product. This is what happens when you just do all coding and no introspection. The scrum events, are a measure to prevent this as you have put it - through inspection and adaptation. Alex Freidman put it in a graphical manner on his LinkedIn post: 4 lines of code, 40 thousand lines of thought. Coding is just the tip of the iceberg and the icing on the cake. No one developer has all the answers and those that do have all the answers need to share their knowledge. Maria nails it in one swoop - communication and collaboration make for effective teams. Developers and Management who appreciate the coding iceberg should in theory respect the scrum events.
except that the transparency is not for all, it is for devs to work in a goldfish bowl, and become constant salesmen for their work, with all the popular stress inducing micromanagement techniques like burn up charts and burn out charts and people that don't do the producing saying how great scrum is. It is not a software dev framework, it is a client relations framework at best. The fixed length sprint concept is unsuitable to complex work that is variable in length and creates unrealistic expectations.
Man they had to estimate in story points AND T-shirt sizes then management used them as packages to sell as units of time?? That is one deep, abusive rabbit hole to get stuck in. No wonder this guy sounds so resentful.
Anyway I think you make some fantastic points! The one on the daily scrum and retro is very interesting.
My thoughts on that are rooted in the belief that scrum is really a developmental framework. All the events intend to develop certain behaviors and habits that become natural. Once those are developed and the team has found what works best for them the events themselves aren't so necessary. So in looking at the daily scrum the intent is to develop constant communication and adjustments to the plan which makes progress towards our sprint goal. For a team that has established those skills I just mentioned I think your solution could be a great idea, but I would be hesitant if it was a team still working on that development even in a remote situation.
Same for retrospectives. First the team has to be at a point where they are naturally looking for opportunities to improve or experiment before moving off of some sort of cadence. I do admit in a virtual environment once per sprint can be tough and feel forced. Teams that get into situations where they feel they feel everything is as good as it can be are a red flag though and a sign that retros need more emphasis and purpose.
Overall I think this guys frustrations are more with how his management abused and misused estimations then scrum related. It's just easier to point the blame at scrum I guess
I do find his last statement kind of annoying. Seems he is trying to discredit a counter argument that is actually true if he just read the scrum guide as you mentioned. They are doing all kinds of stuff that are the root cause of his frustrations but very few actually have anything to do with scrum.
You managed to sum it up so much better (and shorter) than I did!
@@AgileStateofMind Thank you :) Thank you more for your content! Keep it up 👍
Impeccable attention span
You sound like a great leader, Magdalena!
Hi Maria. It's been a while. Thank you for your latest, it's great to see you back. On topic - I've stopped doing scrum... buuuut that's due to recent mass redundancy 😄.
I agree regards some of the tedium around the ceremonies, however I used the method you articulated of walking the board and delegating running stand-ups to team members to get and keep them engaged. As for cutting back on meetings, I also agree, though only when the team is doing scrum well.
Taking over as scrum master in a culture where the cadence of dev teams were not appreciated (rather the entire backlog was the perpetual sprint goal/spill) - the "team building" retros were instrumental in giving the teams a voice to articulate exactly their frustration and what needed to change. This resulted in distilling and setting clearly defined, and achievable sprint goals which the teams...well... achieved! Consistently. Upshot - greatly improved morale, beautiful burn downs (only a scum master would understand), and predictability. I knew this scrum thing was good for something. Love your work
Hello again! Nice to see you back here :) Those are some first-class accomplishments, way to go, Ashley! And happy to hear "walking the board" worked for your team 🙌
One of the reasons I am becoming more interested in the Toyota Kata (Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata) because it implies that you need to build these agile thought processes top-down. Have worked in teams where senior leadership thought they were being agile, but were really just output focussed.
Yep, exactly, so many people think they know or are agile, it really makes sense to sit down and talk about it with them: "How would you describe an agile mindset?" And go from there. Because many times what we call "agile" or "scrum" are some totally different things....
Hey Maria, thanks again for another great educational post. This was a passionate one and I appreciate how important Scrum education is. Let's face it, Scrum is a philosophical ideology that selects its users. Just like its parent agile. Only those willing to study its ideals and adjust to the mantras can in time learn to appreciate the benefits. Once again, it is a philosophy and not a formula, this is just what is hard for adults to get. I dare you to take a close look at the articles of those criticizing Scrum. What are their attitude, advice, or solutions towards BUILDING EFFECTIVE TEAMS? you will get to the root of the problem. If you value teamwork, then, as you say, you have to get COLLABORATION and COMMUNICATION right. Scrum or no scrum, these skills are integral for organizations running complex systems to do so efficiently. As usual, at the end of my comments, I have a question to ask. One reason why scrum easily fails as we may have become aware is a lack of interest and understanding of it. But in the fast-paced environment of the modern organization where the last thing developers want is another meeting (more on this later). What are practical ways scrum knowledge can continuously be infused and interest in making it work fostered?
Oh my! That's one huge comment, John. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
To answer your question, it was way more easier back in the office. I would take some time after the daily or during the retro to offer an "Agile education pill" to the team on a topic that was currently on the table.
In the remote setting, I guess that could be possible still especially after the daily. There is also the option to create CoPs but as you say that's yet another meeting and hard to find a good slot in people's schedules
Loved the video. Great analysis of my post!
I appreciate that, Santi! 😃
Great video! Loved what you said about Story Pointing and understanding the work (around 06:27).
Thank you, Gary! To me, getting to a shared understanding by the team is the biggest advantage of the estimation in story points. One that seems to be highly underestimated! Pun unintended ;-)
Agreed!@@AgileStateofMind
I love your humor! I am feeling with you. Thanks for those messages ❤🎉
Awwww, thank you Alona! 😊 And good luck with your channel!
One change that we made was going to scrumban and it seemed to naturally fix a lot of these types of issues. Some teams have even gone to straight kanban.
Makes sense. I really like doing Scrum with Kanban and leaving out more and more restrictions...
@@AgileStateofMind its been very positively adopted by my teams after the initial apprehension of course. Planning becomes much less prescribed and throughput. Wip and cycle time are far more valuable imo then trying to figure out burn down and velocity
@@kingjames1308 totally agree! The team must feel they are more free, right?
Yes, scrum is a game changer when you go straight to Kanban
I must say, that it is one of my favorite recordings that you made! Especially the last point! To be honest, it is sad, but too often people do not invest time to read the original material 🤷🏻♂
Oh, and this one also won my subscribtion, I do not use that button often 😅
Sad but true, right? Yeah, life could be so much easier if people knew what they are talking about hahaha "Nie znam się, to się wypowiem" right? 🤣
@ OMG! That's a huge win! 💪
@@AgileStateofMind Yep, this is a base skill of my fellow countryman 😅 I must admit, that sometimes I play this card when I want to share my few cents, the spell usually is cast like this "I do not know this topic, so as you may know as a Polish guy I am perfectly suited to speak about it, here are my few cents ... " 😂
Jokes aside, I appreciate open conversations, even when participants don't have expertise, but when discussion starts to be serious, not casual, then I expect that everyone at least devoted a while to check the sources to refine their opinions before debate 🙂
@ hahahah yeah, we should get some medals for that "Polish" skill of ours!
This was really entertaining. 😂 Thanks for the chuckles.
Making people laugh is one of my passions!
@@AgileStateofMind and it's absolutely why I love your videos! Thank you 🙏
Great topic for discussion 👍🏻
Love this one! Oh have to go - they are selling new iPads for 500 Story Points at the tech market in town 😂🎉
hahahaha exactly! Invest in "500 story points" it's better than Bitcoin!