Jan de Boer wrote:I sometime have had it with this scrum here there and everywhere as a holy grail. Now if that manager guy is talking about scrum...okay, I think: 'oh please, cut the crap..'.
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Jan de Boer wrote:Our manager constantly says that scrum is the alternative to waterfall, and waterfall is bad. And we all did waterfall before, and it is old fashioned. Scrum is good.
Guillermo Ishi wrote:When I read about Agile, a lot of times my impression is that it incorporates a lot of what decent developers do naturally.
But it seems like its purpose is to rob that experience from you and micromanage it back to you. A weekly or bi-weekly meeting to make sure things continue moving is all the participation a manager should have, in my opinion. The rest should be good team players doing what's natural.
Got us to the Moon just fine.
I wrote:There are agile developers who don't even know or care that they are, in fact, doing Agile.
Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Scrum is supposed to make sure those pieces have business value.
Christian Peacock wrote:
Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Scrum is supposed to make sure those pieces have business value.
That's the bit that I don't like.... I like to be free to spend a bit of time improving things behind the scenes (refactoring etc) that may / will have value further down the line, but how do you justify this to most business managers?
Junilu Lacar wrote:I'm curious, what exactly has this guy been saying that makes you say that he's touting Scrum as "the holy grail."
Jan de Boer wrote:So if scrum is good, let it be good, but I will experience that for myself.
Jan de Boer wrote:What I do not like is the two weeks sprint period. I had a discussion about it. And he told us that making it three weeks does not win anything. My answer, if it does not lose anything either, I would like it to be a little longer, because I find this is more pleasant, was laughed away, without arguments.
Jan de Boer wrote:Furthermore I think that scrum is 'noisy' sometimes. Yes we have to work together as a team. But also I want to have some time to figure out something by myself, in silence. I work the best like this. I am very sensitive to distractions. And if everybody is dual programming or something, I cannot get anything done at all.
Jan de Boer wrote:And if everybody is dual programming or something, I cannot get anything done at all.
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Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Scrum does not require pair programming. In fact, it doesn't weigh in on pair programming at all.
Junilu Lacar wrote:In his book, "The Software Craftsman," author Sandro Mancuso refers to these people as "The Wronged".
Jan de Boer wrote:
Junilu Lacar wrote:In his book, "The Software Craftsman," author Sandro Mancuso refers to these people as "The Wronged".
"The Wronged" ???
Now I am trying to keep an opened mind to this, but using this terminology does not really help. It's like the people who would not like scrum are not only "The Wronged" but "The Evil Ones", or even "The Losers" who are not good enough for our method. And that is the attitude I am feeling here presently. What ever the cause maybe, if it is not scrum as such then the team here. Now I am not that much against Scrum at the moment, but things like these does not get me enthousiastic about it either. I apologize. I will continue to read about it and try to understand it better though.
Sandro Mancuso wrote:
Identifying Skepticism Patterns
...
The Wronged: This is a dangerous type. Developers in this group think the company has wronged them. They usually feel they are underpaid, or never had the recognition they deserved, or are being unfairly treated. They usually don’t like the company and never miss an opportunity to badmouth it. In extreme cases, they may do things that can harm the project they are in just for the satisfaction of quietly saying, “I told you so. You got what you deserved.” Their presence on a team can be extremely destructive, contaminating other developers. And worst of all, they don’t resign. They just stay there waiting to be fired so they can press charges against the company.
No more Blub for me, thank you, Vicar.
Paul Clapham wrote:
So a system was written for the New York Times which was hugely successful, and then everybody claimed that they'd always believed that structured programming was the way to go. However it soon turned out that the success of the Times's project was mostly due to the fact that it had been implemented by an extremely competent programmer. Before long it was evident that it was possible to write really bad code using only structured programming -- and I don't think that you'll be surprised by that. If you only have mediocre programmers, I think that no matter what system they follow you won't get anything better than a mediocre system.
Chris webster wrote:I am still convinced that the Agile caricature of "waterfall" is mostly a strawman for propaganda purposes. Or maybe they were just doing waterfall wrong?
Junilu wrote: I realize that when you're a proponent of something, you're inevitably going to come across as preachy or dogmatic to some people. This isn't the first time I've been told this...
Junilu wrote:I know Agility when I see it and because of that I'm compelled to point out when I hear people say "this is Agile" or "this is what Agile is about" when I know it's really not...
Junilu wrote:My first project when I came to the US was a huge $36M failure, traditional waterfall.
Junilu wrote:
it's not so much about the process or the rules, it's about the mindset, attitude, and the willingness and readiness to adopt and adapt, even if that means breaking the rules and making new ones. Most of all, it's really about the people you work with and treating them like people, not replaceable cogs in some big piece of machinery. It's about admitting that we still can mess up despite our best efforts. It's about owning up to our problems and taking responsibility.
Junilu wrote:I think that the people who try to "do" Agile will never get it right. The only people who will get it are those who try to "be agile"...
Paul wrote:
If you only have mediocre programmers, I think that no matter what system they follow you won't get anything better than a mediocre system.
No more Blub for me, thank you, Vicar.
Chris wrote:This relates to my point about why we are still - apparently - so bad at Agile. The reality is that at least 50% of programmers are probably mediocre or worse (and personally I doubt there is a normal distribution of programming talent in the first place). Any methodology that only works for the top 10% is not really going to help most organisations, because many of them are going to be fairly mediocre as well. Either we need to be a lot better at enabling mediocre programmers to become better at Agile, or we need to find a different methodology that actually works for them. So far the Agile industry just doesn't seem able to address this problem.