Hacker News Reader

Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Yes! The proliferation and role of "business people" in traditional companies is IMO their defining characteristic. It shows how much or how little a business trusts engineers (and also engineer's "status" within the company, e.g. are they respected and valued or treated as a disposable resource) to run the business as general problem solvers.

The ironic thing about Agile is that it has a cottage industry of "scrum consultants", "scrum masters", project owners, etc. which advocate ostensibly for letting developers self-organize but which also has a vested interest for career and self-preservation reasons in inserting itself above software engineers in the decision making process.

View on HN

Keep in mind that Agile (using the term loosely) was invented by software consultants who wanted to maximize the value they provided to the business they worked with. It’s a formalization of the ideas to make them more “acceptable” to execs and the decision makers (who care about such things).

When applied to in house engineering teams, it is largely ineffective if it doesn’t come with the same kind of freedom that highly paid software consultants get. This is manifested concretely in how many companies have corrupted agile methodologies by focusing too much on the perfecting practices (or “ceremonies”) rather than focusing on the foundational principles.

I'm convinced that the vast majority of business-y manager types that always trumpet "we have to be more agile" have never read the agile manifesto - specifically the "individuals and interactions over process and tools".

It's regretful that it caught on so well and has (incorrectly) evolved into a concrete process in most places rather than an ideology.

I've long imagined a position just above the scrum masters: the scrum lord.

I see this position as a critical component of any agile strategy that seeks to maximize scrum master productivity, while still allowing scrum masters all the autonomy they need for their day-to-day duties.

I appreciate your sense of humor

Why settle for scrum lord when you could be scrum king? Scrum emperor? One day even scrum Pope?

> scrum Pope

his holiness will make his presence known in due time

Somehow I suspect that something like this is at work inside the Vatican.

Pope Scrootus the 1st

God-Emperor of Scrum. The code must flow.

Now fly my scrumlings! Bring me their estimates! Eeehehehe

Meh. A real Evil Scrum Lord makes his victims enter the data by themselves into Jira.

Twice. Once in points after Planning Poker has sized the story -- the second time in hours.

OMG planning poker. Never again.

Hell no. At least then I know it’s entered in a sensible way. If I let the scrum lord do it it’ll be a mess.

In the grim darkness of the future, there is only Scrum!

Value based scrum black belt.

Scrumplestiltskin. He promises to teach you to spin stories into code but then takes credit for your prototype.

not sure you're going far enough there. Obviously we need a scrum king to guide our scrum lords as they help our scrum masters transform our organization.

What are the perks that flow from the divine right of scrum kings?

The right to make all your slaves refine user stories for the next forty years, of course.....

I definitely agree with you, but I don't think that's sufficient. I think at larger companies it would be helpful to spend a day or two every quarter having a scrum increment meeting. The SI would let scrum lords and scrum masters plan what experiments would occur during the next quarter.

Isn't that just the Scrum of Scrums meeting, only at higher level perhaps?

I think that's the joke.

It would be like scrum of scrums in LeSS or PIs in SAFe. But instead of focusing on what work would be done, it would focus on how it would be done, and what changes scrum masters would make.

I was trying to expand that the joke is already a reality :D

What you are looking for is RTE; Release Train Engineer

haha wow

suppose I should have guessed there were already layers above and beyond the scrum master

it's like the leaning tower of bullshit

Its turtles all the way up.

Click [here] to sign up for my Free Introductory Scrum Lord certification course! Join our hundreds of Certified Scam Lords earning well above industry standard after just 12 months of online training!

(Credit card required. Rebilled at $29.95 per month until cancellation. Minimum period of 12 months. T&Cs apple.)

The scrum lord spends most his day in his office making spunk charts. The making of spunk charts is an intensely personal task that uniquely suits them for office ownership. There have been cases where two or more scrum lords create spunk charts together but it is more rare.

Still, at my company I have an even more lofty title. I am the Kanban King...

These are people whose entire job consists of sitting in meetings and firing off emails. They can't conceive that other people do work collaborating outside of a meeting room.

Not just collaborating. Any kind of work.

We plan 8 hours a day of work for developers, but they spend 4 hours in meetings, 2 hours fielding questions and just 2 actually working.

At my job its more like 10-12 hours a day, since you are counted on to do 6-8 hrs of programming despite all the other stuff.

To be fair, I've seen engineers with a similar role.

yep, and thank god. Because I sure as hell dont want to do that as a developer

Reply on news.ycombinator.com