* Posts by Sixdaysjim

1 publicly visible post • joined 9 Jan 2015

Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all

Sixdaysjim

Scrum has it's good points the problem is...

As with all things the initial idea has been subverted by the higher ups.

Scrum is great if it can actually be implemented correctly. short stand ups are useful first thing to know what everyone is doing, but should be less than 10 mins (that's total not per person)

the problem as always is that managers and business in general does not buy into scrum. Scrum will produce you great software but it will not do it in any fixed time frame you have in mind (i.e. it's not always suitable). Business as a whole does not work in that way. Business is all about making profit. That's it nothing more nothing less. Make profit is their one and only concern, regardless of what they say (business will fail if they do not make a profit, so saying they are in business to help or be ethical or any other bull is just that it's bull)

Scrum can and does lead to profit (better software with good customer relations will eventually lead to better sales and better user experience which will drive profits) , but not if you are following a traditional business methodology (get it done, get it done fast and i don't want to pay for it), which is why managers say they are implementing scrum but they really aren't.

Self organising teams are great if they are actually allowed to self organise. In my experience the managers say "you are self organizing" what the actually mean is "we are going to blame you if anything goes wrong". They say "You can choose what you take into a sprint" what they mean is "you will do what I say when I say it or I'll fire you" they say " you can release with the minimum viable functionality" what they mean is "I've signed a contract that says I will deliver every tiny bit of functionality that the client wants, in a time line that is completely ridiculous, and I intend to lay the blame squarely at someone else's feet when it all goes tits up because I'm a moron."

the problem is not in the agile methodology it's in the world wide business culture that says "the person at the bottom is held responsible". The truth of the matter is that the person at the top is ALWAYS to blame every single time.

if the people that do the work could be allowed to do the work, without interference from above (Guidance, yes! Overall vision, yes! Bigger picture thinking, Yes?) then agile would work, waterfall would work, move fast and break things could work, but with the caveat that it would work only if everyone knows what the hell they are doing.