Thanks for putting this out there. Coming originally from XP, I agree completely that Scrum has put out some important ideas but ultimately the failure to include development practices has let so many to have mixed results and we need a different drum to beat

@ThePassionateProgrammer

Ай бұрын

Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated!

Sadly, I think the origin of much of this was the displaced traditional IT Project Managers moving to scrum masters and product manager roles as careers paths. Their frame of reference and default mode is “managing resources”, and managing “hand-offs”. Since most of these folks (In my experience) are not very technical, all they can really do is “manage resources” and “get requirements”. From my experience, this is where it started falling apart. Some of the cause is also us devs. Some of us absolutely hate maintaining code and happily prefer “handing it off” to some other “operational” team instead of “running what you build”. These hand-offs introduce significant process latency, creating interdependent teams that result in little if any benefit to the business. In such cases, the teams might as well return to good ‘ole traditional IT processes. At least expectations would be better aligned. I know I sound like I am being critical of traditional PM trying to move to a newer role, but I am really trying to just criticize the observed tendencies for those folks to apply their comfortable traditional approach to scrum/agile and effectively remove most of its benefits. Seems kind of pointless and is certainly confusing a lot of people.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

12 күн бұрын

You bring up an excellent point. This has been my experience as well. When traditional project managers become Scrum Masters many keep acting as project managers instead of servant leaders because that’s their ‘mode’ of working. I also agree that us devs can be part of the problem because most of us were never taught that there are ways of building enterprise software without incurring technical debt. It’s not our fault because these skills are generally not known but building software without incurring technical debt is not only possible but very doable. I’ve worked on projects where the teams had these skills and projects where the teams didn’t have these skills. The former gets better results.

I see some elephant carpaccio behind you. Long live small vertical slices!

@ThePassionateProgrammer

Ай бұрын

Yes, that’s the elephant in the room and it has been vertically sliced. Thank you for pointing that out!

The great enemy of time-boxing is the manager who demands that the dev team incorporate his desired change or new feature near the end of the sprint. If you have to live with one of these management types you should consider changing to Kanban.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

25 күн бұрын

Yeah, I’ve seen Scrum abused and misused by managers in many ways including changing the Sprint Goal in the middle of the sprint.

Thank you for your continued drive to make software development more effective and better.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

Ай бұрын

You are very welcome and thank you for making Seattle a leader in software craftsmanship. You guys are awesome!

I can affirm your views from my own experience in application development within the enterprise context. It's become a religion on it's own, cherry picking the most superficially observable characteristics, a new cargo cult. Most scrum masters lack a sufficient appeciation of hard skills such as technical dependency management which is key for enterprise contexts where 20 different systems are impacted for trivial features.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

26 күн бұрын

Thank you for your feedback. I agree. And I understand there is a knowledge gap between technical and nontechnical people in software development but Scrum has only widened that gap. I am really relieved to be out.

@BryonLape

21 күн бұрын

Become? It was always a religion.

@cristianstoica4544

15 күн бұрын

​@@BryonLapemore like a cult

Andy Hunt put it well, "The agile manifesto establishes abstract principles for skilled practitioners in a healthy environment. But novices can’t apply such abstract principles directly, they have to start with unambiguous, context-free, concrete rules." Beyond novices, there are many people who abhor uncertainty and simply want to be told what to do -- including how to "do Agile." Enter the consultants, the gurus, the methodology wonks, and it was all downhill from there.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

20 күн бұрын

Wow, I’ve been trying to understand what is at the root of the challenges in the software industry. I think you hit on one of the big ones-people want to be told “what to do” or how to do Agile ‘right” but Agile is all about responding in the moment, not creating a bullet-proof plan. Thank you for the insight. I totally agree.

@SuperPranx

18 күн бұрын

I’ve found (or felt, to be more accurate) that the demand for “what to do” and “how to do” are most often born from having managers that give horrible feedback for developers that didn’t do exactly what the manager had in their minds (and only in their minds). Being exact, to that often unattainable point, requires a detailed specification with all aspects considered and pre-planned. With “the game” rigged in such a way, there’s no incentive to try and be agile… not unless the top levels really embrace agility…

thanks for this video. I found over time the question being asked of me 'do you do / can you do agile / scrum' in a variety of roles and contracts. When I studied the agile manifesto and its core principles however I could not fail to notice a distinct difference between my understating of its core principles and the way it was and is being implemented. More over I had to see that agile and scrum are seen as management tools by many. The freedoms and radical nature of agile I implement myself and in my own work and this is successful, so I find it difficult to understand how agile has become what it is right now typically in the work place.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

18 күн бұрын

Thank you for the comment. I agree that Agile and Scrum have diverged from their original intention. There’s still a lot of value in them but many people have distorted them and, as you say, turned them into a management tool, including and especially the very organizations who are popularizing (and profiting from) them.

I’ve always been a SCRUM advocate. This has been great for bite size features and bug fixes. However I’m now hitting what you have described. The size of the features have increased despite trying our best to reduce them down to SPRINT-size. The ceremony now is often a hinderance. I’m really looking forward to more content from someone who wants this to better.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

16 күн бұрын

Thank you. I’ll be releasing a new video every week to address how we can overcome the challenges from Scrum and sustainably build better software. Stay tuned!

I really respect your decision. Thanks for sharing the story behind it.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

Ай бұрын

Thank you for your support. It means the world to me!

I enjoyed your analysis ❤

@ThePassionateProgrammer

Ай бұрын

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I reject Scrum...and SAFe....

@ThePassionateProgrammer

21 күн бұрын

Yeah, SAFe is worse than Scrum on ignoring the core technical practices. It is seriously damaging industry! Wow, how did the world end up in this situation?

I agree wholeheartedly.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

Ай бұрын

Thank you, Michael. I know you see the challenges too. Let’s do what we can to fix them!

Manager: So... I can hire a bunch of juniors and get them to produce product? Agile guy: What? No, that's not what this is about, you can't - Manager: I can't hear you, I'm too busy hiring juniors. Oh man, the money I'll save!

@ThePassionateProgrammer

15 күн бұрын

Yup, and those are the same managers who fire their devs and replace them with AI only to find that AI without guidance will run their business into the ground. It is so shortsighted.

First of all thank you for putting this thought out there. I think what you're getting at is that scrum is not a holistic practice that covers the upstream and downstream practices that are completely essential. The "forcing function" is not functioning, because it's just easier to compromise on the principles. I do believe that for all the problematic scenarios that are mentioned there are existing solutions, as I'm certain you are aware, but not necessarily competency within the non scrummaster roles to address them. So in that sense I think scrum makes a false promise, that by hiring a scrummaster you can have an agile team. I don't think most scrummasters have the knowledge or skills to coach product owners and devs on implementing practices that will allow them to achieve agile values, or to operate successfully within scrum methods without compromising.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

12 күн бұрын

You are very welcome! I agree, Scrum Masters do not have the skills to coach software developers on how to write extensible code. Most developers do not know these skills and so those projects become challenged. My problem with the Scrum Alliance is that they are in complete denial of this and constantly deprioritize and devalue the people who actually do the work. They do not know and they do not want to know that technical practice are integral to successful software development with Scrum and that is a BIG PROBLEM for everyone doing software development with Scrum. But I’m not just about pointing out problems. I have real solutions that I share on this channel so stay tuned and thank you!

I've heard this argument time & time again, in one way or another from other working Scrum Masters, and they were frustrated.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

12 күн бұрын

Thank you for your comment. I agree, there’s a lot of frustrated people on Scrum teams. All of the Scrum literature says that Scrum is incomplete by design and in order to use Scrum for software development you must employ other frameworks. But that is not what the Scrum Alliance teaches Scrum Masters. They say and imply that all you need to do is follow the Scrum Guide and everything will work out. That’s not how I’ve seen Scrum play out in dozens of organizations over the last two decades. As a top consultant I get the inside story at many top organizations that I’ve worked with and I see problems everywhere. These are big problems but there are solutions. I also wanted to thank you, Katherine. My KZread stats tell me that 100% of my viewers are male. To solve these important challenges we need everyone so I wanted to thank you and everyone who isn’t a ‘white guy like me’ because your unique perspective is what we need to move forward. I’m excited to share everything I know on this channel.

so what is the alternative to scrum?

@ThePassionateProgrammer

14 сағат бұрын

Excellent questions and thank you for asking! The alternative to Scrum is called Extreme Programming (XP). It includes the iterative development that Scrum advocates as well as a series of technical practices that actually helps you build changeable software. It’s been around for two decades and has had great success. But there isn’t a marketing engine behind these methodologies, no certification organization making millions turning out graduates, which is why it isn’t popular like Scrum. There’s only a book called Extreme Programming Explained (www.amazon.com/Extreme-Programming-Explained-Embrace-Change-ebook/dp/B00N1ZN6C0/). But every developer I ever met that was on an XP development project loved it and wish all their projects were like that.

Well as always. Good principles get corrupted by people wanting control without the skills or even basic understanding and wanting to pay as little as possible for it. We are left with managers with no IT skills managing junior devs and calling it SCRUM. A recipe for disaster which incidently explains really well all the BS "junior position with 10 years of experience" job postings..... Btw I don't even think it is the scrum master's role to "protect the team", that's the lead's role imo. A scrum master ideally should be on the same footing as the devs, as you said, and have little to do with the hierarchy outside of the team itself. .

@ThePassionateProgrammer

11 күн бұрын

Yes, I think there are good principles in Scrum that can get corrupted by people who don’t understand the nature of software development. In some companies it can be really bad. I hope we can return to the roots of Agile and find its benefits again.

👏

@ThePassionateProgrammer

16 күн бұрын

Thank you.

The scrum methodology problem is that was copied from Japanese culture. Same as Kanban. The issue here is that it was forced to be implemented into different cultures that can not be boxed into the methodology. That has stressed projects by itself. You add companies that do not want to adapt to it fully. Making it a Frankestein. I ve worked at different top companies and I m still a CSM. According to studies Scrum is effective at small sprints. However for day to day work it starts to fail becoming a nightmare as the focus on the product gets lost with technical debt. It is better than waterfall yes, as it has feedback every end of sprint looking for improvement and can have unlimited sprints to deliver a functional product. The issue here is we live in a finite world with deadlines. And product owners and managers that pretend they care about Scrum but at the end they run a truck over it imposing their own rules like changing sprint priorities. Then you say better Use kanban then they say. No. Scrum is company's priority.. 😂🤣😬

@ThePassionateProgrammer

14 сағат бұрын

Very interesting. I’ve had the honor of teaching many Japanese developers the technical practices of Extreme Programming and I found them open to the ideas. I agree that differences in our cultures between the east and the west can be challenging. In my experience, Japanese developers find great value in the Agile technical practices. However, I see managers in Japan make some of the same mistakes with Scrum that I see in the west.

@warclan5429

12 сағат бұрын

@@ThePassionateProgrammer I have argued that the MBA mindset is the problem with the management of companies nowadays. They started doing what Microsoft did years ago. Force-Release flashy products to reach the revenue quotes. Then let spend time releasing patches trying to solve "bugs and enhacements" later on. This mindset/Model corelates with the problems suffered in Scrum and technical debt. Going back with Asian/Japanese culture they focused on quality as an art, an example of that manufacturing companies like Toyota,Sony etc.(Kanban there) Did in the past. Nowadays I assume Japanese culture has been "westernized" and now quality has become more like a feature than a flagship. I think it is there where the problem resides.

Let's go back to waterfall.

With AI coming, looks like your out of a job passionate programmer (:

@ThePassionateProgrammer

5 күн бұрын

I don't think so. AI is going to open up new markets and new opportunities. Sure, the tools I use to do my job will change but after 40 years in the industry I'm used to that. I think that developers with AI skills will be in great demand.

Agile is the worst thing that happened to the industry since the introduction of null pointer. Engineers should shut up and code, instead of trying to impose their half-baked STEMish theories onto managerial stuff. The Agile disaster has done enough damage already. Stop making it worse by trying to improve SCRUM.

@ThePassionateProgrammer

2 күн бұрын

Actually, I think Waterfall is the worst thing that happened to the industry. I remember the insanity we had to live with 25 years ago and it was much worse back then. Agile was created by developers for developers and it has some good ideas. But when managers distort it to try to squeeze more work out of devs and ignore the essence of Agile, it becomes part of the problem instead of the solution. I don’t think we should blame Agile for this. We should blame the people who misapply it and use it solely to justify their waterfall ways.