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Stories = Requirements Engineering

Assigning Points = Roughly estimating how long it takes you to implement it

Allocating Work = Well... allocating work

Standups = Talking with your colleagues about the current work and clearing problems

Reviews = Showing your results

None of that seems unreasonable. The only thing that kinda sucks are the rigid sprints, because they just cause artificial stress by setting unnecessary deadlines.

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They’re not unreasonable in themselves. What sucks is the process around them, because it impedes progress. Why because each tasks varies, and often it morphs while you’re working on it. So whenever a metric is fixed or something interrupts you repeatedly, it just sucks.

Or worse than impeding progress, everyone adjusts their expectations to only that which can comfortably fit into a sprint. Big gnarly bugs, meaty technical problems, or innovative solutions - too risky. Better just take a few random tickets off the board and keep plodding along.

The direct effect is organizations start systematically ignoring the forest and start obsessing over the trees, simply because trees are easier to measure. And then inevitably wondering aloud "why is velocity AND quality tanking?". Anyone with half a brain can see why - disincentivizing innovation destroys innovation.

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