Scrum and “Agile” has ruined every job I've ever worked at | Hacker News Reader

Scrum and “Agile” has ruined every job I've ever worked at

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If there is not a strong team lead to push back and get those meetings canned, the only thing you can do is vote with your feet. Just a bad deal, sadly.

I truly love scrum when it's 7-minute standup meetings and then I get to run the rest of my day in peace. But as a team lead myself, I need those quick stand-up meetings so I can "pick up" if anyone is stuck. Many devs refuse to ask for help and it's my best way of "catching" them. ;)

I love Agile and Scrum when the Scrum “master” doesn’t have an ego. Sadly it seems rare.

When value/worth are being calculated by scrum master metrics, your job will migrate to gaming those metrics.

yes! I worked at a place that seriously drank the agile koolaid. If you weren't going to finish a story, you'd get some sad frowny faces in slack, and if that wasn't a motivator (it generally wasn't, sometimes you just can't finish something because it was started late due to a dependency and it's not your fault), it was often declared "done" anyway, full points were booked, and another ticket was created to finish the rest of the work. It was a complete sham to get our "percent complete" up.

One guy did this for months. The same ticket would keep getting extended.

Sounds like someone who's never worked at a waterfall style company, they love their meetings and planning too.

They sure do!

I have quite some experience working in Waterfall orgs. Starting around 2012, I noticed Scrum becoming the default. But, not much changed, just the ceremonies are called differently!

At many orgs, Scrum is just a thin veneer over top-down planning. It gives the developers an illusion of freedom while being in practice yet another instrument of control.

Not that there is anything wrong about wanting to control your org's processes! Could we just be more honest about it?

For example, the daily standups are advertised as a tool for team synchronization. More often than not, it's status reporting with the PO/SM intently listening and probing. A well-gelled team will obviously sync itself on the go without any need for this ceremony.

The worst offender is often the retro. I've been to way many retros that were completely led by the manager (PO, SM). But even if the manager is out of the room, what's the point?

A tightly knit team won't need a biweekly retro. It solves its problems as they arise. I would prescribe retros when the team is freshly formed and abolish them as soon as it gels. Then, let's meet offsite once in a while, hang, shoot the shit, and discuss the big picture.

I think that overall Scrum has brought some benefits and some agility to sw development at big orgs and maybe it's only there where it still provides some value. I'd be interested to learn whether startups of today use it at all?

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