I wrote, “Scrum is a cancer,” and the Internet had thoughts about it

Very fair, good call (moving rather than deleting) and thanks for posting this explanation. I was enjoying the pile-on (though was arguing good faith devil's advocate in an attempt to create a better discussion), but it was definitely not adding value beyond validating people's already held opinion. I think many of us have suffered under Scrum, so we get emotional about it, but it's adding nothing substantive to the post.

I think the fact that people are so eager to hate on Scrum that they're willing to engage again says _something_ though.

I understand why it happens but please don't repeat like this - it makes merging threads a real pain! I had to find your original comment and then merge the replies to this one over to that one.

More helpful would be to give us a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. If a thread is so similar that you're about to copy-paste what you already posted, that's a significant signal of dupiness! or at least followupness (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

Yeah, I've read it. His point on communists telling him those instances of communism are "doing it wrong" is relevant here.

So the problem isn't Scrum; it's that most implementations of Scrum aren't true to its principles, often bending or breaking the rules.

Examples:

* Having a UX designer role that's not part of the Scrum team

* (Those) people working one sprint ahead

* Multiple POs

* POs not being business owners, but SAFe project managers

* Scrum Masters acting like project managers

* Teams not owning their sprints

* Not letting the team in on backlog creation

* User stories written like functional designs, not system requirement

* Focus on sprint backlog items as opposed to sprint goals (It's just a to-do list)

The point of Scrum is simple: The PO owns the product spec. Developers own the development of the product. It lets engineers do the enginering.

Break these rules, and you're letting corporate waterfall creep into the agile process. SAFe often makes this worse. Jira isn't helping either.

The reality is that, in a traditional line-management organization, Scrum can help to create an "agile bubble". But you need a good Scrum Master who's going to enforce the rules and safeguarde the agile process. The good ones are rare.

I had a very communist camping trip last weekend. It went swimmingly. Happens all the time.

Scrum... I have no defense for.

> Folks, if every single instance of communism has ended up being a shit-show, maybe it's not that people are doing it wrong

If a system X says to do Y but everyone who says they are doing X is actually not doing Y I don't see how the conclusion is Hahaha the problem is not that people are doing it wrong.

Maybe actually doing X is unachievable or doesn't work in practice, but you can't conclude that just from people doing something else and calling it X.

Same with scrum, obviously, except that lots of people do work in Scrum teams that work. And in my experience, the teams that think they're doing Scrum actually work quite well when they do Scrum properly and experience a lot of pain when they do something else but call it Scrum.