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Comment by NotATroll | Hacker News Reader

I'm far from an agile-ista, but.

> The alternative to Agile is Software Engineering, where you do important things like assess your requirements and capabilities, identify how to validate those requirements are functioning properly and support your business requirements, promote testing and QA to a first-class citizen. Most importantly to always have functioning software that is reasonably demonstrated to be correct. That way you release with confidence, people take pride in their work, and the product, team, and schedule all become quite pleasant.

That just sounds like Agile...

Like, legit just sounds like the Agile Manifesto.

Honestly, if anything is likely to be the issue. It's Scrum. Scrum has the cargo cult. Agile just seems to get drug through the mud by everyone that implements some authoritarian variant of Scrum.

But again, not exactly a proponent of Agile here anyway.

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    That just sounds like Agile...

Agreed!

    It's Scrum. Scrum has the cargo cult.

What do you see as the problem: Scrum itself, or the cargo cult of folks who do it badly?

Scrum done properly is very low overhead, at least from a developer's standpoint.

At my old job we did fairly strict Scrum and I estimated that it consumed only about 4 (so, 10% of a theoretical 40-hour week) of my hours per week.

I feel that is very low overhead. I don't know of a lot of development scenarios where you don't need to spend at least 10% of your time communicating with management.

I mean, people really have to think about what their actual dream scenario is. Some kind of world where they only have to spend 1% of their time interacting with management? 0%? These people need to get real. Management/stakeholders exist and you are going to need to communicate with them.

I have had jobs where upwards of 50% of my time was spent in seemingly endless meetings, plus "drive-by shootings" where management randomly stopped by and wanted to see progress and dump new shit onto my plate. Scrum is not perfect, but for most workplaces would be an upgrade.

    Agile just seems to get drug through the mud by 
    everyone that implements some authoritarian variant 
    of Scrum.

I feel it is close to the opposite.

"Agile" is a nebulous term that has lost nearly all practical meaning. Bad management does some weird, loose version of "agile" (usually with some trappings of Scrum) and gives both Scrum and "agile" bad names.

> What do you see as the problem: Scrum itself, or the cargo cult of folks who do it badly?

Scrum itself. Sorry, but when you create a list of ScrumButs and indirectly deride everyone for not being able to take "Full Advantage of Scrum" so that your purists can go out and attack it at full force, yeah, that might be the problem.

The idea that different organizations might actually benefit from not adopting a methodology wholesale isn't that farfetched.

You could argue that's part of the cargo cult, I'd agree to some extent. But it becomes difficult to separate the 2 when you're literally derided for not following it to the religious T.

I guess you have had different experiences than me. We did fairly strict Scrum at my old job for a few years.

I never felt "attacked at full force" or "derided" even though we didn't follow Scrum to a T.

Never saw that "ScrumButs" thing until I Googled it just now.

I still don't feel attacked or derided. I've talked to dozens and dozens of developers over the years with various feelings on Scrum and never experienced those feelings.

But, you do, and it is 2020 so all feelings are valid. I'm sorry you've had bad experiences. People should not be jerks to you about Scrum or anything at all.

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