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Re:Ask HN: Do you think Agile/Scrum is beneficial for softwa... by nialv7 on Friday March 05, 2021 @07:10AM (#26355925)
> The irony is that one could still have predictability and metrics without Scrum

I like to think that it would take a technically competent manager to understand the progress and performance of the developers. OTOH, with Scrum, you can generate numbers, however meaningless, without such prerequisites.

That's probably why some managers like it.

Re:Ask HN: Do you think Agile/Scrum is beneficial for softwa... by BlargMcLarg on Friday March 05, 2021 @07:43AM (#26356210)
Honestly, while my cynical self would love this to be true, generating basic metrics (numbers of bugs solved, number of features added, average time a developer spends in meetings, etc.) doesn't require a lot of technical competence and already say far more than a vague metric like "velocity" (which, most of the time, is really just speed). Especially if the tool allows one to do this with a few clicks.

More likely is that, if teams were truly "self-managing", the number of management, management-lite and pseudo-management roles should be lowering drastically every year (or at least converting to hybrid roles). Yet I barely if ever see a Scrum adoption result in the majority of managers losing their jobs or changing the type of role they are performing. I also doubt data scientists would appreciate these middle-school tier statistics be called data science.