In the present case, every comment in this thread was so generic that there was literally nothing specific to the current post. Since the original thread is still recent enough, I've moved the comments thither.
Very fair, good call (moving rather than deleting) and thanks for posting this explanation. I was enjoying the pile-on (though was arguing good faith devil's advocate in an attempt to create a better discussion), but it was definitely not adding value beyond validating people's already held opinion. I think many of us have suffered under Scrum, so we get emotional about it, but it's adding nothing substantive to the post.
Normally I'd agree with you because that makes sense, but because I'm one of these people, I have a (obviously heavily subjective) different take: Scrum is _so_ vile, that it causes enough pain to warrant endless hatred.
People want it gone, and all the middle-managers along with it.
We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.
---
IMHO: Agile is great. It can even happen without calling it... agile!
Alas: Most SCRUM is not Agile.
My opinion on SCRUM: As implemented in most places, it is WORSE than waterfall. It lacks the planning of waterfall, and the psychological tricks of timeboxing.
That said, I bet you could take all the same "practices" and move them into a better culture, and they'd work.
I understand why it happens but please don't repeat like this - it makes merging threads a real pain! I had to find your original comment and then merge the replies to this one over to that one.
More helpful would be to give us a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. If a thread is so similar that you're about to copy-paste what you already posted, that's a significant signal of dupiness! or at least followupness (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
So the problem isn't Scrum; it's that most implementations of Scrum aren't true to its principles, often bending or breaking the rules.
Examples:
* Having a UX designer role that's not part of the Scrum team
* (Those) people working one sprint ahead
* Multiple POs
* POs not being business owners, but SAFe project managers
* Scrum Masters acting like project managers
* Teams not owning their sprints
* Not letting the team in on backlog creation
* User stories written like functional designs, not system requirement
* Focus on sprint backlog items as opposed to sprint goals (It's just a to-do list)
The point of Scrum is simple: The PO owns the product spec. Developers own the development of the product. It lets engineers do the enginering.
Break these rules, and you're letting corporate waterfall creep into the agile process. SAFe often makes this worse. Jira isn't helping either.
The reality is that, in a traditional line-management organization, Scrum can help to create an "agile bubble". But you need a good Scrum Master who's going to enforce the rules and safeguarde the agile process. The good ones are rare.
Scrum is really like communism.
Everyone keeps saying “read the agile manifesto “ but the people who practice scrum (communism) most likely never read it. They just “get the idea”.
Same applies to the works of Marx and Engels: they are designed for completely different set of people compared to the ones that quote them and tend to say “they get the ideas”.
> They keep mentioning this book they read and how every person who shed blood under communism was "doing communism wrong."
Hahaha, ouch.
Folks, if every single instance of communism has ended up being a shit-show, maybe it's not that people are doing it wrong. Same with Scrum, obviously.
> Folks, if every single instance of communism has ended up being a shit-show, maybe it's not that people are doing it wrong
If a system X says to do Y but everyone who says they are doing X is actually not doing Y I don't see how the conclusion is Hahaha the problem is not that people are doing it wrong.
Maybe actually doing X is unachievable or doesn't work in practice, but you can't conclude that just from people doing something else and calling it X.
Same with scrum, obviously, except that lots of people do work in Scrum teams that work. And in my experience, the teams that think they're doing Scrum actually work quite well when they do Scrum properly and experience a lot of pain when they do something else but call it Scrum.
Scrum is a cancer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37289151 - Aug 2023 (254 comments)
We downweight most follow-ups because they don't contain significant new information (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), which means they don't lead to substantively different discussion.
In the present case, every comment in this thread was so generic that there was literally nothing specific to the current post. Since the original thread is still recent enough, I've moved the comments thither.