The End of Agile

Re:The End of Agile by notus on Friday August 23, 2019 @09:26AM (#20777296)

Honestly, the part about agile I dislike the most is a dedicated scrum master role. They have very little to do if they aren't split between multiple teams and instead try to come up with weird ways to add value which usually don't add any value. We had agile coaches at my company recently and it was one of the more painful experiences of my career. They would try to add all these different flavors of grooming, planning, standup, and retro that usually just led to developers being uncomfortable and wanting to work from home. I'm not saying agile doesn't work, but it doesn't need to be a full time job and take up that much of developers time and they sure as hell don't need to inflate the process and methodology just to feel better about themselves.

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Re:The End of Agile by dragonwriter on Friday August 23, 2019 @10:39AM (#20778105)

> Honestly, the part about agile I dislike the most is a dedicated scrum master role

That's not a part about Agile, but about Scrum.

Also, the “dedicated” part isn't even essential to Scrum.

> We had agile coaches at my company recently and it was one of the more painful experiences of my career. They would try to add [...]

That's a different issue than a dedicated ScrumMaster role, and anti-Agile, as team ownership of process is central to Agile. Consultants external to the team (whether internal to the org or external there, too) trying to impose process is the antithesis of Agile. There might be a role for coaching in Agile, but it certainly isn't process advocacy.

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Re:The End of Agile by notus on Friday August 23, 2019 @11:36AM (#20778681)

Fair points, I tend to conflate agile and scrum since they seem to be coupled together. I get that the dedicated part isn't a requirement, it just seems to be part of most implementations I see. I guess my problem is more with people's implementations.

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Re:The End of Agile by bamboozled on Friday August 23, 2019 @10:27AM (#20777981)

We have this now, our scrum masters do everything now because they don’t really understand their role nor is it well defined. It’s hell.

They are now delving into solutions architects and seem to be expert software engineers who ask questions like, “but isn’t that simple? How come it’s going to take so long” etc.

Nightmare.

I find it telling that I never met scrum masters who can actually tell you what they’re working on or what their backlog is. Funny that?

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Re:The End of Agile by notus on Friday August 23, 2019 @10:38AM (#20778086)

Yeah I always see scrum masters as trying to play engineering manager or play at a role that isn't theirs nor are they qualified for. They also seem to think most engineers are stupid and can't even walk without hand holding.

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Re:The End of Agile by bamboozled on Friday August 23, 2019 @06:28PM (#20783327)

Yup, also same experience, if someone asks for actual requirements or deadlines they think we are dumb.

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Re:The End of Agile by tyingq on Friday August 23, 2019 @09:57AM (#20777643)

"the part about agile I dislike the most is a dedicated scrum master role."

You probably haven't yet experienced SAFE / Scaled Agile at a non-tech Fortune 500. There's worse things people can slap an Agile tag on :)

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