this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
46 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

1082 readers
9 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.

Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.

Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
MinutePhrase@lemmy.ml
46
Are agile scrums an outdated idea? (aus.social)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by ajsadauskas@aus.social to c/technology@lemmy.ml
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Are agile scrums an outdated idea?

Here's a video on YouTube making the case for why agile was an innovative methodology when it was first introduced 20 years ago.

However, he argues these days, daily scrums are a waste of time, and many organisations would be better off automating their reporting processes, giving teams more autonomy, and letting people get on with their work:

https://youtu.be/KJ5u_Kui1sU?si=M_VLET7v0wCP4gHq

A few of my thoughts.

First, it's worth noting that many organisations that claim to be "agile" aren't, and many that claim to use agile processes don't.

Just as a refresher, here's the key values and principles from the agile manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/

  1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
  3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  4. Responding to change over following a plan

* Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
* Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
* Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
* Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
* Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
* The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
* Working software is the primary measure of progress.
* Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
* Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
* Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
* The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
* At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Your workplace isn't agile if your team is micromanaged from above; if you have a kanban board filled with planning, documentation, and reporting tasks; if your organisation is driven by processes and procedures; if you don't have autonomous cross-functional teams.

Yet in many "agile" organisations, I've noticed that the basic principles of agile are ignored, and what you have is micromanagement through scrums and kanban boards.

And especially outside software development teams, agile tends to just be a hollow buzzword. (I once met a manager at a conference who talked up how agile his business was, and didn't believe me when I said agile was originally a software development methodology — one he revealed he wasn't following the principles of.)

#agile @technology #technology #scrum #tech #Dev

top 16 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] BarneyDellar@mastodon.scot 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @technology Is also worth noting that the daily scrum should not be about reporting. It should be the team coming together to plan their day.

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

@BarneyDellar @technology You're right, it should, in truly autonomous cross-functional teams that have a high degree of delegated decision-making.

But that's not what tends to happen in many larger, hierarchical organisations.

In those organisations, what can tend to happen is the daily scrum becomes where managers get to micromanage details and staff are expected to report back their progress.

(I'm thinking about one past job in particular, where it was explained to me that: "The scrum is important because it allows our manager to keep track of our progress and set priorities.")

[–] BarneyDellar@mastodon.scot 4 points 11 months ago

@ajsadauskas @technology Oh yeah, seen that too! But if you’re daily status update isn’t working for you, maybe you should try having a daily scrum instead :)

[–] Unsaved5831@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago
  1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
  3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  4. Responding to change over following a plan

1, 2 and 4 all together sounds like a recipe for incessant alignment meetings. Especially in organisations where teams are not stable, where people come and go or have multiple projects to take care of. It is just a loss of knowledge and everyone has something different in their minds.

[–] delProfundo@aus.social 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @technology I use them mostly to gauge whether folks understand what they are doing and if not to start a side bar after the fact to course correct, early in analysis if possible.

My direct teams do work that is partly exploratory into domains they don’t understand so a 15 min check in to see who needs guidance each day saves pain and money.

I would say other teams adjacent to ours have turned theirs into order giving status updates. I’m no longer welcome at those.

[–] delProfundo@aus.social 2 points 11 months ago

@ajsadauskas @technology oh and they all hate me because their tickets ain’t done till I’m satisfied with the documentation

[–] tobias_barth@hessen.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @technology So, it took 20 years until someone dared to express these simple facts in public.

[–] reddwarf@feddit.nl 2 points 11 months ago

This comments speaks to me. From day one you could see the problems with agile and my gods, if you dared to push back you were 'not cooperating with the team' and other BS like that.

I have yet to see an agile/scrum way of working that does not devolve in waterfall within 5 nano seconds. Funniest was the IT team that needed to support about 10 other teams (developers). Good luck in getting agile with that while diving into a tunnel where 10 teams start pulling your resources on the fly. The IT team was on the end (they tried like 5 times to enforce agile on us) absolved from using agile as the complete project would come to a stand still in a day if we followed the agile principle.

[–] crumbleneedy@aus.social 3 points 11 months ago

@ajsadauskas @technology as with so many things it depends on the people involved. we have a daily 15-min standup that's good for raising issues and blockers, asking questions, keeping the team across releases and significant production issues, ensuring that everyone has work for the day, etc. it helps that it's run very effectively. all of that can be and is done in other channels but it's a good way to get everyone on the same page together. does it cost money? all meetings cost money. but i would argue that good efficient meetings pay for themselves.

[–] stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

I honestly believe that the people who complain about these aren't using them properly or work for people who don't know how to use them properly. People have been using some version of the huddle, standup, or SCRUM meeting for a very long time. Whether it's useful or wasteful is probably more a question about the people who are using them.

[–] airwhale@mastodon.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@ajsadauskas @technology

As always, it depends on what problem you need to solve. I still think these methodologies are sound as long as you ADHERE TO THE CORE PRINCIPLES.

It's not about reporting or speed, but rather communication and quality delivered at a sustainable pace. It's also about collaboration with the user/customer. Management often don't understand this (or chooses not to).

A stable, mature team should be able to do every-other-daily, but scheduled check-ins are valuable.

[–] ajsadauskas@aus.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@airwhale @technology The issue is that often the core principles of agile fly in the face of how many big companies and organisations work.

Big orgs are often built around hierarchical command-and-control. They're built on monofunctional teams, processes, and procedures. They're built on KPIs and reports. They're built around getting stakeholder approvals ahead of waterfall projects.

So the bits of agile that tend to get picked up and implemented are the kanban boards and daily "scrum" meetings.

And the bits that tend to get left on the cutting room floor are the bits about products being the most important output, the autonomy, the cross-functional teams, the ongoing customer input, etc.

[–] airwhale@mastodon.social 1 points 11 months ago

@ajsadauskas @technology

Yes, you are absolutely correct AJ. "Enterprise Agile" is its own beast, and where we usually need to start at higher management levels. Education is important for them to understand their new roles.

Without buy-in and active collaboration towards "real agile" from managers, we will not succeed in moving away from micromanaged waterfall.

[–] kcarruthers@mastodon.social 2 points 11 months ago

@ajsadauskas @technology we’ve customised our agile practice to fit the team. And it has evolved over the years. We usually start new projects using a very traditional approach and evolve it depending on the team, skills, and culture. I think the original principles still hold.

[–] schrotie@fosstodon.org 1 points 11 months ago

@ajsadauskas @technology
Funny video. He's apparently doing real CD and his stakeholders know every day what's going live. I don't know how he works in detail, but very likely it's pretty agile. It's just not by the (scrum) book.
The authors of the agile manifesto were very experienced software craftsfolk and "just" pudlished their common sense. As the guy in the vid does. If devs communicate anyway, e.g. if you have rotating pair programming, you probably don't need a daily ...

[–] ExLisper@linux.community 1 points 11 months ago

Each org is different. There are organizations doing agile in a shit way, there are organization that are shit because they don't do agile and there are some that do OK because they take out of agile just what they need. In my first job they would write all the requirements up front, agree the price, sign a contract and then discover crucial functionality was missing. So they could either deliver useless product and piss off the client or do some extra work for free. It was shit. In my next company everything was nicely divided into sprints but the process was so overgrown working there was super boring and most project didn't even finish, they just got cancelled somewhere in the middle. My current company mostly lets teams organize themselves and is using agile to monitor progress and react if something gets delayed. It's mostly fine. Agile is not the problem and it's not a universal fix. You simply have to be smart about which or it to use and how.