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Scrum is not "Agile cosplay." It's just a different way of limiting WIP. First off, go to the Scrum Guide and show me where it's required to use Story Points in Scrum . . . it's not.

All Scrum says is to pick a goal to accomplish in 1-4 weeks, build a backlog of stuff you need to do to accomplish the goal, go do it, show it to the stakeholders, and retrospect. You limit WIP by focusing on one goal and only pulling in what's necessary to get there in 1-4 weeks.

Kanban is a perfectly valid way of doing things as well, but half the Scrum-bashers out there are taking big whacks at a strawman, because 80 percent of the time, they're not actually attacking Scrum. They're attacking some ancillary practices someone tacked on like planning poker, story points, burndowns/burnups, etc. Or they're mad at some idiot manager or executive, often rightfully so, for misunderstanding what Scrum even is or misusing it to abuse people. Don't blame the tool when someone misuses the tool.

Some of the worst words ever written in software were when Jeff Sutherland talked about "twice the work in half the time."

>Don't blame the tool when someone misuses the tool.

Sure, but just like when finding the fault with everything indicates the fault is in you if almost everyone misuses a tool the fault is in the tool.

You can't win. Scrum is "purposely incomplete," so everyone complains that it's too theoretical and not prescriptive enough, so people extend it and expand on it and then get told "that's too heavyweight; we don't need a detailed framework."

Who complained Scrum is not agile and Scrum should be more prescriptive?

As I’ve read your replies, it sounds like you’re defending Agile, not Scrum. Scrum is more prescriptive. I’ve never worked in a Scrum shop or even heard of one that didn’t have all the features commonly associated with it: burndown charts, backlog refinement with some kind of pointing consensus, retros, and a scrum master that drives all of these.

Could you provide some material that explains how to do Scrum in a different way?

Yeah, the literal document by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland that says what Scrum is.

https://www.scrum.org/resources/scrum-guide

Some quotes to keep in mind:

> As Scrum is being used, patterns, processes, and insights that fit the Scrum framework as described in this document, may be found, applied and devised. Their description is beyond the purpose of the Scrum Guide because they are context sensitive and differ widely between Scrum uses. Such tactics for using within the Scrum framework vary widely and are described elsewhere.

> Scrum exists only in its entirety and functions well as a container for other techniques, methodologies, and practices.

Burndown charts can be used in Scrum, but are not Scrum. Backlog refinement is an ongoing activity in Scrum, but its precise form is left undefined. Story points can be used in Scrum, but are not Scrum. The Scrum Master is a role which is explicitly defined in the Scrum Guide, but there is nothing there claiming they are there to "drive" anything, only be "true leaders who serve the Scrum Team and the larger organization." The retrospective is defined in the Scrum Guide, but its precise form is left undefined.

That’s great, but it’s still too vague. If the industry is geared towards a specific implementation of these nebulous descriptions, with all of their scrum conferences and scrum master certification courses, then the common implementation becomes a defining characteristic.

A scrum master should be a true leader… well, part of being a true leader is being direct and firm when the going gets tough. Push eventually comes to shove. A team isn’t tracking to their goal for the sprint? Push. A team repeatedly fails to meet a prior high water mark for velocity? Shove.

Can you provide some examples of places you’ve worked at that do Scrum in different ways than the common cliché?

> … indicates the fault is in you if almost everyone misuses a tool the fault is in tool

Or, more likely I think, because the tool is popular and is used by many companies, is statistically more likely to find it misused.

statistically more likely to find it misused does not seem to match up with almost everyone misuses, although I guess you could argue there was some sort of law that once a tool moves beyond only expert usage to ubiquitous usage all non expert users added in ubiquitous phase will misuse tool therefore making it seem that it is the tool's fault.

I would argue however this is not the case for well-designed tools, and then people who are not experts can become experts with such and not misuse, keeping the percentage of misuse of a well-designed tool at an even level as usage increase.

The percentage of misuse rising at a rate nearly equal to its usage rate indicates a poorly designed tool / that something is lacking.

if you look closely, I didn't say Scrum IS agile cosplay.... I said it encourages it. IMHO The problem with Scrum is that the nature of Scrum encourages the abuse of it. It is ripe for gaming, ripe for making jobs that didn't need to be jobs, adding busywork, etc.

I work in technical diligence, and have personally interviewed about ~60 companies now on their processes among other things. I have definitely seen good, high-functioning Scrum! But I see it abused more, and in my experience every scrum team I've been on suffers those problems, whether mild or extreme. I just don't think choosing a process that sets you up for organizational process abuse is a good plan.

Left to my own devices, I would use a combination of Kanban and XP, with Scrum retrospectives. Figuring out how many things can fit precisely in the next two weeks would be the first thing on the chopping block - mostly a waste of time and gamed all the time.

Of course the real elephant in the room is that agile at its fundamental core is predicated on good automated testing and most teams don't have good automated testing. I would estimate ~10-20% of teams I talk to are actually doing agile as it was intended in the manifesto. (And these are companies that are getting major investments or aquisitions, or we wouldn't be talking to them). :-/

Very fair points. There's a lot of cheap Agile-bashing online, on LinkedIn, etc. and it often comes down to folks missing many of the points you make here.

Scrum isn't the be-all and end-all, but like many things people like to deride, it ultimately comes down to someone saying "that Agile Manifesto sounds great, but what do I actually need to DO?"

I like to think of scrum as more a "build up to" than a start at type process. Start with kanban and add as you have time and see fit.

Need to forecast when something will be done? Do sprint planning and assign some story points

Want to track cadence over time? Set a sprint start/stop date so you can measure in time periods

Feeling comfortable in your process and want to continue to look for improvements? Add retros

Working on high collaboration work and need progress updates? Change frequency of stand-ups

Later, you might be in a crunch to complete a big project and sprint planning is redundant since you already have a decent amount planned

Sprints are not needed to measure cycle time and forecast.

> Kanban actually helps development go faster.

I agree, but was interesting to see mgmt at a startup I was at fight against this in favor of their "scrum" - they liked sprints because they'd push devs to commit to more work, and then scold people when they didn't finish enough. They were convinced they were speeding things up.. I left shortly after but was first time I'd seen "agile" abused this way.

It happens all the time. And then that encourages the weasels on the dev team (every team has some!) to game the system that way, overpointing the tasks they know they can take and kick out quickly to look like rockstars.

IMHO with Scrum it takes very few bad apples for the whole thing to fall down.

Is this the book you're referring to? https://www.microsoftpressstore.com/store/agile-project-mana...

OP, please don't leave us hangin'.

Yup!

IMO, a company that does one well will do their other one well.

I’ve personally found that the lack of barriers on Kanban allows teams to get sloppy with the work they accomplish. Having a cycle or cadence give an intentional space for the team to scrutinize their work.

^this on so many levels.