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matthewmacleod

Don’t run sprints if you don’t need them - that’s the answer.

But honestly, I’m not sure what the problem is. I’ve found they they’re perfectly suitable at providing:

- an opportunity to check in with a wider team and demonstrate features.

- the chance for the development team to periodically review progress and identify any recurring issues.

- the chance to plan upcoming work and identify any external tasks that need to be taken care of.

Is the problem maybe that some organisations are over-using the “commitment” aspect as a metric? To my teams, “commitment” has generally meant “what we have agreed among ourselves we will be able to deliver in a unit period”. The metrics are purely internal, and useful for allowing us to see if we frequently over- or under-estimate how much work we can do; the sprint is really just the period of time across which we measure and refine.

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> Don’t run sprints if you don’t need them - that’s the answer.

Except the people being forced into the sprint aren't the ones with power to opt out. It has always been my experience that there is a "product owner" or agile coach or some other title who makes the decision, and isn't one that has to live inside the system they create.

So I agree with you in theory. Some people thrive in the sprint, others suffer and struggle. If everyone could opt in or out, it would be great. But in practice I've never seen the ability to opt out.

You are experiencing the fake 'agile'. Where in the agile manifesto do you see anything about mandatory sprints? See, you are doing a forced process but some sleazy management is calling it agile because the word once got popular among software devs.

The universal answer to problems with agile is that the complainer is not doing agile correctly. This may even be true. It may still represent a problem.

The usual response to that is to read the agile manifesto, read a bit of history of it and watch some videos on youtube from the people involved in its beginnings. You should then discern the original agile movement values from the salesmansy bullcrap that the word agile turned into.

The problem is “sprints” need to alternate with cooldowns. When are the cooldowns?

Nobody sprints non-stop, that’s a marathon.

If they were called something like “timeboxes” you get all your bullets without the demoralizaing notion of inability to maintain an unsustainable pace.

Right - the plan in agile is to spend your entire work life madly 'sprinting' at some eternally moving finish line. You can't sprint non-stop. It's madness.

I don't think anybody is arguing against you. "Sprint" is just a terminology, maybe not the best one but it's not like you're supposed to "maintain an unsustainable pace". Working after hours would be undermining yourself in Scrum for exemple (your daily speed would now be supposing you do overtime)

"The metrics are purely internal"

bwhahaha, good one!

Well, I'm describing how my teams have worked, and it's true!

I'd be even stronger on that point – not only should metrics probably not be available outside of the team, but they are even completely without meaning if they're used outside the context of the team. Maybe one of the biggest problems people experience with Scrum or Agile generally is the inappropriate use of metrics.

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