Wow.. SCRUM is **horrible**...
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I've worked for a lot of different companies, but this company is the first one where they have been "official" / "gone overboard" on SCRUM. Why does anybody use this garbage methodology? It is HORRIBLE. Personally, I prefer a cool environment where everybody on the team works together, wants to make the product cool, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, etc. SCRUM just breeds a "me" mentality. Sorry Bob, I don't care about your issue until you open a defect and get it approved by a PM and get it inserted into a sprint. Yeah Jim, that feature sounds cool!! Write up a user story and submit it to the PM for approval and get it inserted into the current or future sprint. SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation. I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it". Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss. He can come and randomly tell me to make changes when he is neither the PM or the PO. I'm also discouraged from doing anything above and beyond because everything requires a ton of paper work and 73 people to get involved. Use to be.. hey John, can you bust that out real quick? You mean change this bool to false? Sure, no problem!! Be done in a sec. Now its "submit all the proper paperwork and get the PM to approve it". Worst methodology ever. Thoughts?
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Project management ideologies were created to, and continue to exist to, give PM's and other noncoder assholes jobs. This industry is diluted and hurt by people wanting to be part of it, simply because it pays well, and there is still some growth. These people don't want to, or simply can't code, so they take any other approach to gain entry. If, nay, when I start my company, everybody will have the ability to code, if you are in a non coding position, that one of your previous jobs will have been coding or you are currently learning. Everyone should understand the love affair with coding, the frustration, the rewards. Everyone. Lawyers, sales, human resources. Everyone.
Wow, you and I think exactly alike. I also believe fervently that all involved, from a certain point down of course, need to have at least a fundamental understanding of coding. PM's are a waste of good oxygen. I still haven't met one worth spit. And all the PM's I know have zero coding experience. That means they 'issue orders' that usually are bizarre and create timelines that always fail because they don't know what they're asking for in terms of work. The best teams I'v been a part of are those where everyone, including decision makers, all know how to code.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Sounds like somethings going badly wrong. Agile methodologies, including SCRUM are supposed to empower the developers within an organisation. By the sound of it that isn't working, and the team may need a mentor to help sort out the ego's involved.
Rob Grainger wrote:
supposed to empower the developers
As soon as you use the term "empower" you know it's headed down the wrong trail. I feel so empowered having said that
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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I've worked for a lot of different companies, but this company is the first one where they have been "official" / "gone overboard" on SCRUM. Why does anybody use this garbage methodology? It is HORRIBLE. Personally, I prefer a cool environment where everybody on the team works together, wants to make the product cool, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, etc. SCRUM just breeds a "me" mentality. Sorry Bob, I don't care about your issue until you open a defect and get it approved by a PM and get it inserted into a sprint. Yeah Jim, that feature sounds cool!! Write up a user story and submit it to the PM for approval and get it inserted into the current or future sprint. SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation. I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it". Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss. He can come and randomly tell me to make changes when he is neither the PM or the PO. I'm also discouraged from doing anything above and beyond because everything requires a ton of paper work and 73 people to get involved. Use to be.. hey John, can you bust that out real quick? You mean change this bool to false? Sure, no problem!! Be done in a sec. Now its "submit all the proper paperwork and get the PM to approve it". Worst methodology ever. Thoughts?
"you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" - that only works in teams made of responsible and self-made people. But this is very uncommon nowadays. Instead, there are tons of half-educated fake players in IT. A typical dialog: - Sam: Why it doesn't work? - John: This is Tom's fault, he made a bug. He always injects bugs. - Tom: No, it does not work due to John's bug, this is his sole fault. SCRUM is here to fix that submarginal situation by putting a bit more responsibility in interactions between team members. So, if you hear some company uses SCRUM then you have to already know that the company experience troubles with team members.
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Project management ideologies were created to, and continue to exist to, give PM's and other noncoder assholes jobs. This industry is diluted and hurt by people wanting to be part of it, simply because it pays well, and there is still some growth. These people don't want to, or simply can't code, so they take any other approach to gain entry. If, nay, when I start my company, everybody will have the ability to code, if you are in a non coding position, that one of your previous jobs will have been coding or you are currently learning. Everyone should understand the love affair with coding, the frustration, the rewards. Everyone. Lawyers, sales, human resources. Everyone.
+5. Good luck.
CPallini wrote:
You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him. :Smile:
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"you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" - that only works in teams made of responsible and self-made people. But this is very uncommon nowadays. Instead, there are tons of half-educated fake players in IT. A typical dialog: - Sam: Why it doesn't work? - John: This is Tom's fault, he made a bug. He always injects bugs. - Tom: No, it does not work due to John's bug, this is his sole fault. SCRUM is here to fix that submarginal situation by putting a bit more responsibility in interactions between team members. So, if you hear some company uses SCRUM then you have to already know that the company experience troubles with team members.
Adding more process to make it look like you are doing something to fix the problem instead of just fixing the problem. That always ends well.
CPallini wrote:
You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him. :Smile:
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That's actually quite the opposite. I used to get along great with my boss because we both enjoyed the "cool / unofficial" environment where you just want to get stuff done and move forward and scratch each others back environment. I think his boss wanted us to do SCRUM on this project, but my boss doesn't really want to conform to it. He never shows up to stand ups (hell, nobody does), SCRUM rules don't apply to him, etc. He never cared about documenting ANYTHING... granted that was an issue too though lol, because half the stuff he would tell me to do, i would be like "wtf? never heard of that before" and he expected you to be a mind reader. Thats the issue though. We are trying to do SCRUM, but as I said, SCRUM rules don't apply to my boss, so he does the "hey, why don't you re-write this to work like this?" and I say "well, this is what the PM wanted" and he says "I don't care what the PM wanted, this is what I want".
This is a conflicting situation. There are two solutions: 1. Make a PM to be your new boss 2. Make your existing boss to be a PM You can not have two bosses involved in conflict of interest. This is a road to hell and you will be the one who failed at the end :sigh:
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Project management ideologies were created to, and continue to exist to, give PM's and other noncoder assholes jobs. This industry is diluted and hurt by people wanting to be part of it, simply because it pays well, and there is still some growth. These people don't want to, or simply can't code, so they take any other approach to gain entry. If, nay, when I start my company, everybody will have the ability to code, if you are in a non coding position, that one of your previous jobs will have been coding or you are currently learning. Everyone should understand the love affair with coding, the frustration, the rewards. Everyone. Lawyers, sales, human resources. Everyone.
:thumbsup: You confirmed to be ready to start your own company. The time has come, now or never. Have a good luck
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Adding more process to make it look like you are doing something to fix the problem instead of just fixing the problem. That always ends well.
CPallini wrote:
You cannot argue with agile people so just take the extreme approach and shoot him. :Smile:
[irony mode="off"] It may end pretty well if PM is not a fake player. [irony mode="on"] Otherwise it indeed always ends well.
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I've worked for a lot of different companies, but this company is the first one where they have been "official" / "gone overboard" on SCRUM. Why does anybody use this garbage methodology? It is HORRIBLE. Personally, I prefer a cool environment where everybody on the team works together, wants to make the product cool, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, etc. SCRUM just breeds a "me" mentality. Sorry Bob, I don't care about your issue until you open a defect and get it approved by a PM and get it inserted into a sprint. Yeah Jim, that feature sounds cool!! Write up a user story and submit it to the PM for approval and get it inserted into the current or future sprint. SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation. I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it". Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss. He can come and randomly tell me to make changes when he is neither the PM or the PO. I'm also discouraged from doing anything above and beyond because everything requires a ton of paper work and 73 people to get involved. Use to be.. hey John, can you bust that out real quick? You mean change this bool to false? Sure, no problem!! Be done in a sec. Now its "submit all the proper paperwork and get the PM to approve it". Worst methodology ever. Thoughts?
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss.
"Selective agile development" isn't "agile development". I work at an agile shop and our daily scrums are anything but stressful. I (and my manager) always know what my workload is, and he's able to juggle/postpone fixes and features based on the team's capacity. I find the user story paradigm helpful because it forces stakeholders to clearly specify what they need built/done. If more work is required, a new task is created, and time estimates automatically increase (or decrease) as required. It seems your shop (despite their best intentions) may not be using the agile development process the way it's intended to be used. :( /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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You sound like being in a project run by another horrendous "scrum master". We're only required to speak up if we're not on track, and perhaps if we need help. I don't remember attending one stand-up meeting in more than a month now, and I'm part of the scrum team too. I'm not claiming it to be a universal solution to solve everything, but it isn't as bad as the OP portrays it to be. Any tool can yield bad results if handled by someone who isn't skilled enough to operate it correctly.
"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
You sound like being in a project run by another horrendous "scrum master". We're only required to speak up if we're not on track, and perhaps if we need help. I don't remember attending one stand-up meeting in more than a month now, and I'm part of the scrum team too.
Only participated in school, and only for two days. "Prince" got shot down on the first day.
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
I'm not claiming it to be a universal solution to solve everything, but it isn't as bad as the OP portrays it to be. Any tool can yield bad results if handled by someone who isn't skilled enough to operate it correctly.
If you take away the rigid structure of Scrum, all that you're left with is common sense :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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That's actually quite the opposite. I used to get along great with my boss because we both enjoyed the "cool / unofficial" environment where you just want to get stuff done and move forward and scratch each others back environment. I think his boss wanted us to do SCRUM on this project, but my boss doesn't really want to conform to it. He never shows up to stand ups (hell, nobody does), SCRUM rules don't apply to him, etc. He never cared about documenting ANYTHING... granted that was an issue too though lol, because half the stuff he would tell me to do, i would be like "wtf? never heard of that before" and he expected you to be a mind reader. Thats the issue though. We are trying to do SCRUM, but as I said, SCRUM rules don't apply to my boss, so he does the "hey, why don't you re-write this to work like this?" and I say "well, this is what the PM wanted" and he says "I don't care what the PM wanted, this is what I want".
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
I think his boss wanted us to do SCRUM on this project, but my boss doesn't really want to conform to it. He never shows up to stand ups (hell, nobody does), SCRUM rules don't apply to him, etc.
I think that might be the root of your problem. Sounds like some manager was playing a game of Buzzword Bingo and decided he needed to get one of those SCRUM things. Some of the things you have stated that you don't like about SCRUM indicate that you are a Gunslinger, wanting to shoot from the hip and work in your organization under your own terms. "Just doing cool stuff" is neither an effective model for adding specific business value nor a way to capitalize on an organization's strengths. You have essentially said that you consider yourself a gatekeeper for adding business value through technology and "the coolest thing" is the one you want to do.
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
We are trying to do SCRUM, but as I said, SCRUM rules don't apply to my boss, so he does the "hey, why don't you re-write this to work like this?" and I say "well, this is what the PM wanted" and he says "I don't care what the PM wanted, this is what I want".
This is likely irreconcilable, depending on your organizational structure. If you have no one to escalate a conflict between your Product Owner and your Manager, you have a problem. In SCRUM, the Product Owner dictates priorities, and there is no "manager" that can override the Product Owner's priority list with the Development Team. Don't blame SCRUM for your organization's failures. It's not a product that can be piloted; it's a framework for cultivating and nurturing a mindset change.
"I need build Skynet. Plz send code"
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SledgeHammer01 wrote:
Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss.
"Selective agile development" isn't "agile development". I work at an agile shop and our daily scrums are anything but stressful. I (and my manager) always know what my workload is, and he's able to juggle/postpone fixes and features based on the team's capacity. I find the user story paradigm helpful because it forces stakeholders to clearly specify what they need built/done. If more work is required, a new task is created, and time estimates automatically increase (or decrease) as required. It seems your shop (despite their best intentions) may not be using the agile development process the way it's intended to be used. :( /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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I've worked for a lot of different companies, but this company is the first one where they have been "official" / "gone overboard" on SCRUM. Why does anybody use this garbage methodology? It is HORRIBLE. Personally, I prefer a cool environment where everybody on the team works together, wants to make the product cool, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, etc. SCRUM just breeds a "me" mentality. Sorry Bob, I don't care about your issue until you open a defect and get it approved by a PM and get it inserted into a sprint. Yeah Jim, that feature sounds cool!! Write up a user story and submit it to the PM for approval and get it inserted into the current or future sprint. SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation. I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it". Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss. He can come and randomly tell me to make changes when he is neither the PM or the PO. I'm also discouraged from doing anything above and beyond because everything requires a ton of paper work and 73 people to get involved. Use to be.. hey John, can you bust that out real quick? You mean change this bool to false? Sure, no problem!! Be done in a sec. Now its "submit all the proper paperwork and get the PM to approve it". Worst methodology ever. Thoughts?
I don't think SCRUM is horrible, I think your manager is. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Now replace guns with SCRUM and the second people with manager ;)
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
} -
I've worked for a lot of different companies, but this company is the first one where they have been "official" / "gone overboard" on SCRUM. Why does anybody use this garbage methodology? It is HORRIBLE. Personally, I prefer a cool environment where everybody on the team works together, wants to make the product cool, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, etc. SCRUM just breeds a "me" mentality. Sorry Bob, I don't care about your issue until you open a defect and get it approved by a PM and get it inserted into a sprint. Yeah Jim, that feature sounds cool!! Write up a user story and submit it to the PM for approval and get it inserted into the current or future sprint. SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation. I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it". Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss. He can come and randomly tell me to make changes when he is neither the PM or the PO. I'm also discouraged from doing anything above and beyond because everything requires a ton of paper work and 73 people to get involved. Use to be.. hey John, can you bust that out real quick? You mean change this bool to false? Sure, no problem!! Be done in a sec. Now its "submit all the proper paperwork and get the PM to approve it". Worst methodology ever. Thoughts?
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"you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" - that only works in teams made of responsible and self-made people. But this is very uncommon nowadays. Instead, there are tons of half-educated fake players in IT. A typical dialog: - Sam: Why it doesn't work? - John: This is Tom's fault, he made a bug. He always injects bugs. - Tom: No, it does not work due to John's bug, this is his sole fault. SCRUM is here to fix that submarginal situation by putting a bit more responsibility in interactions between team members. So, if you hear some company uses SCRUM then you have to already know that the company experience troubles with team members.
Well, no, it didn't work like that 100% :). I just meant, if a guy was waiting on you and it was a quick 5 second / 5 minute thing that you could whip, you should. Not demand a ticket be opened up.
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SledgeHammer01 wrote:
Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss.
"Selective agile development" isn't "agile development". I work at an agile shop and our daily scrums are anything but stressful. I (and my manager) always know what my workload is, and he's able to juggle/postpone fixes and features based on the team's capacity. I find the user story paradigm helpful because it forces stakeholders to clearly specify what they need built/done. If more work is required, a new task is created, and time estimates automatically increase (or decrease) as required. It seems your shop (despite their best intentions) may not be using the agile development process the way it's intended to be used. :( /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
I think some of the other groups are using scrum "successfully", but in the other groups, I've noticed that the PM calls the shots, and the developers manager generally leaves them alone. If that is how we worked on this team, that would be cool. Unfortunately, our PM isn't an experienced SCRUM master and she isn't technical enough to actually specify what she wants. We get user stories like "as an admin, I'd like to be able to manage users" and she doesn't take into account any of the details. She is also the product owner and has barely used the product to this day. The other product owner / stakeholder was involved for a week or two, but doesn't get involved anymore. Which are all epic fails of SCRUM.
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SledgeHammer01 wrote:
I think his boss wanted us to do SCRUM on this project, but my boss doesn't really want to conform to it. He never shows up to stand ups (hell, nobody does), SCRUM rules don't apply to him, etc.
I think that might be the root of your problem. Sounds like some manager was playing a game of Buzzword Bingo and decided he needed to get one of those SCRUM things. Some of the things you have stated that you don't like about SCRUM indicate that you are a Gunslinger, wanting to shoot from the hip and work in your organization under your own terms. "Just doing cool stuff" is neither an effective model for adding specific business value nor a way to capitalize on an organization's strengths. You have essentially said that you consider yourself a gatekeeper for adding business value through technology and "the coolest thing" is the one you want to do.
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
We are trying to do SCRUM, but as I said, SCRUM rules don't apply to my boss, so he does the "hey, why don't you re-write this to work like this?" and I say "well, this is what the PM wanted" and he says "I don't care what the PM wanted, this is what I want".
This is likely irreconcilable, depending on your organizational structure. If you have no one to escalate a conflict between your Product Owner and your Manager, you have a problem. In SCRUM, the Product Owner dictates priorities, and there is no "manager" that can override the Product Owner's priority list with the Development Team. Don't blame SCRUM for your organization's failures. It's not a product that can be piloted; it's a framework for cultivating and nurturing a mindset change.
"I need build Skynet. Plz send code"
Not necessarily trying to be a gun slinger lol. I guess I was a bit frustrated before when we had no management and just did everything randomly. Problem is now we have gone formal, but the manager is still stuck in his random ways which is in conflict with SCRUM. I agree... he should have ZERO say on the product, but unfortunately, he thinks he does because the PM / Owner / Scrum Master who doesn't show up to scrum meetings doesn't really know whats going on.
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I think some of the other groups are using scrum "successfully", but in the other groups, I've noticed that the PM calls the shots, and the developers manager generally leaves them alone. If that is how we worked on this team, that would be cool. Unfortunately, our PM isn't an experienced SCRUM master and she isn't technical enough to actually specify what she wants. We get user stories like "as an admin, I'd like to be able to manage users" and she doesn't take into account any of the details. She is also the product owner and has barely used the product to this day. The other product owner / stakeholder was involved for a week or two, but doesn't get involved anymore. Which are all epic fails of SCRUM.
The situation you describe is unfortunate. An agile development process will not fix incomplete or missing specifications and lack of planning. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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I've worked for a lot of different companies, but this company is the first one where they have been "official" / "gone overboard" on SCRUM. Why does anybody use this garbage methodology? It is HORRIBLE. Personally, I prefer a cool environment where everybody on the team works together, wants to make the product cool, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, etc. SCRUM just breeds a "me" mentality. Sorry Bob, I don't care about your issue until you open a defect and get it approved by a PM and get it inserted into a sprint. Yeah Jim, that feature sounds cool!! Write up a user story and submit it to the PM for approval and get it inserted into the current or future sprint. SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation. I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it". Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss. He can come and randomly tell me to make changes when he is neither the PM or the PO. I'm also discouraged from doing anything above and beyond because everything requires a ton of paper work and 73 people to get involved. Use to be.. hey John, can you bust that out real quick? You mean change this bool to false? Sure, no problem!! Be done in a sec. Now its "submit all the proper paperwork and get the PM to approve it". Worst methodology ever. Thoughts?
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
SCRUM is just anti-team work, anti-pride of ownership, anti-innovation.
I used to want to make my product cool and get along with my fellow team members, but now with SCRUM, I have to be a dick and say "write it up and get the PM to approve it".Presumably this isn't sarcastic... If you are like most professional developers no one cares about your opinion and certainly not what you think is cool. And that isn't flippant because what matters to the company is sales. Which is driven by customers. So the customers opinion matters and what they think is cool matters. This is often filtered through sales and business analysts so their opinion is of secondary importance as well.
SledgeHammer01 wrote:
Apperently though, SCRUM doesn't apply to my boss..Worst methodology ever.
That is a management failure and a process implementation failure. It has nothing to do with a specific process methodology.
