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Comment by oxfordmale | Hacker News Reader

The only way you can fix scrum is by burning it on the stake. One of the core principles of Agile is to recognize that the best work emerges from self-organized teams. however, most scrum methodologies completely ignore this and put control back in the hands of senior management by introducing heavy handed processes (daily stand ups, retrospective, bi-weekly planning sessions, scrum masters, etc). You know you are in trouble when a team introduces a definition of done and you are in deep trouble when senior management starts discussion burn down rate charts of completely made up story points.

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> senior management by introducing heavy handed processes (daily stand ups, retrospective, bi-weekly planning sessions, scrum masters, etc

said slightly more succinctly:

managers deciding that you will do daily stand ups, retrospectives and 2 week sprints is the EXACT OPPOSITE of team self-management

> One of the core principles of Agile is to recognize that the best work emerges from self-organized teams.

Do you have a source for that? I personally have never experienced that. In contrast, I have experienced that the best work emerges when true trust is ingrained in the organization/culture, meaning a) mutual respect on all levels and b) and willingness to criticize the work of others. These two points are not related to any levels. Senior management can deliver great value to their teams. It very much depends on how they are involved in the work.

Also note that no team can exist outside of the organization that it funds. A dev team of 5-7 devs + PM + UX will cost a company roughly 500-700k EUR/USD per year depending on location. If you want to work on your own ideas with your team and no management interference then go and found a startup.

See, item 11 of https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-...

I am not arguing that teams should work on their own ideas. I am arguing that there are many ways a team can deliver on the requests of senior management without using Scrum. Scrum is very dogmatic and this goes against the principles set out in the Agile manifesto.

I see. I subscribe to that. I am not a big fan of scrum either.

Have you heard about Shape Up by Basecamp? Would love to get some experience accounts on that method.

https://basecamp.com/shapeup

I've done scrum for years and have very rarely had a manager involved in any of those processes, and I have certainly never had senior management involved.

Those processes exist for the benefit of the team and for the team to 'run' itself. There is no reason for management to be there. Stop doing that.

I agree. Scrum is about self-organized teams. Managers are not part of the Scrum team, in fact, they are not allowed to speak in any of those meetings (if they choose to assist at all).

I think the main problem here is a lot of companies do this weird hybrid where Scrum processes are somewhat followed, but managers keep managing the team and sometimes even taking the role of product owner and/or scrum master as well, and that just doesn't work.

That's why sometimes you have people (like me) speeding through the daily standup so that the manager will be late...

You are talking about processes. Who did you think dictates those processes ? Why does Scrum dictate these processes have to be the same for every single team to 'run' itself ?

Based on my experience, Scrum is introduced to re-assure managers and senior management that teams are self-organised in the "right" way.

You've missed the point. I'm not talking about processes at all. I'm talking about the relationship and trust between company management and the team. That is the core problem here. If management want to play Command and Control the whole time and your team is happy to be treated like children, then no, you can't do scrum in any meaningful way, and yes it will suck.

could not agree more!

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