[teampractices] Healthy discussion: A couple of articles against scrum

[Kevin Smith]

Ooh! Good stuff. Thanks for sharing these links, Joaquin.

This message is about the second article, which is specific to Scrum:

http://okigiveup.net/not-big-fan-of-scrum/

I'm a proponent of agile, but am agnostic about scrum. Much of his article
seems reasonable to me.

He decries the use/overuse of "points", but doesn't actually offer a
clear/better alternative. He complains about meetings, and I can't really
argue against his points, because I haven't been on a true Scrum team. His
concerns about meetings being synchronous is relevant to our environment
here.

I agree with him that "sprint" is a terrible name, and I much prefer
"iteration". I find it ironic that his primary frustration with sprints is
that they are *not agile enough*. My personal preference is for one-week
iterations, but I'm not sure how well that would work with true scrum. He
also points out some of the known problems with scrum on large and
multi-team projects.

He expresses concern that refactoring will be neglected. It can, but it
doesn't have to. You need developers who are dedicated to not building up
extensive tech debt, and to continually paying it down a bit. And you need
a product owner who understands that tech debt will, in the long run,
cripple both productivity and user satisfaction. I can't speak with
authority about scrum, but I have worked in a scrumban/scrumbut environment
that put a high value on keeping the code clean. Similarly, I can't argue
that scrum helps you write better code...but I think I would disagree that
it discourages it either.

He says his biggest gripe about scrum is:

Refactoring, reading code, researching a topic in detail are all seen as
"not working on actual story points, which is what you are paid to do".
Specialization is frowned upon. Whatever technology you develop or
introduce, you are not allowed to become an expert at it, because it is
finishing a story that brings the points, not getting the gist of a
technology or mastering an idea. These are all manifestations of the
control mania of Scrum.

Again, I haven't worked in pure scrum. But points and velocity specifically
allow for time spent not coding. That could be time in meetings, or time
reading up on some technology, or time spent with your eyes closed as you
dream up the perfect architecture. If scrum teams are over-emphasizing MOAR
POINTZ then I think they're doing it wrong. Also, I don't think
specialization is frowned upon. Being a single point of failure is, as it
should be in just about any context. Getting stuff done is not incompatible
with becoming an expert.

He ends with a proposed concept for a process which I would be open to
trying with some teams. I suspect some of the meetings he wants to kill
have benefits, but for some teams, maybe they don't. I don't understand his
idea for overhauling the backlog enough to be able to comment on it: "The
backlog would then resemble a network of equations, instead of a list of
items, where solving one equation would simplify the others by replacing
unknowns with more precise values."



Kevin Smith
Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation


On Wed, Oct 5, 2016 at 11:36 AM, Joaquin Oltra Hernandez <
jhernandez at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Some time ago I found a couple of articles from engineers discussing their
> opinion on scrum. At the time I found that many of their arguments
> resonated with things I was feeling in our work.
>
> Max saw the links and suggested chatting about them, so I've thought I'd
> post them to tpg to try and spur some discussion.
>
> As scrum masters and fans, it is going to be easy to feel attacked by
> these articles, so if you know you're going to be affected, it is better to
> not read them.
>
> I am genuinely interested to learn when Scrum is not a good choice. As we
> know in engineering, there is no silver bullet, and it is very important to
> learn about the trade-offs and the adequacy of solutions to different
> situations.
>
>
> Without further ado:
>
> Why “Agile” and especially Scrum are terrible – Michael O. Church
> https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/why-agile-
> and-especially-scrum-are-terrible/
>
> Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
> http://okigiveup.net/not-big-fan-of-scrum/
>
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> teampractices at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices
>
>
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