I wrote, “Scrum is a cancer,” and the Internet had thoughts about it

Re:I wrote, “Scrum is a cancer,” and the Internet had though... by lolinder on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @01:59PM (#37326192)

I'm reminded of Ben's question about the shamble-men in The Name of the Wind [0]. It doesn't particularly matter whether people are disappearing because of shamble-men or because of bears and wolves, if people are regularly disappearing in the woods then you'd do well to steer clear of them.

In the same way, I don't particularly care if Scrum fails because people consistently fail to implement it "right" or if it fails because it's a flawed concept at its heart. Either way, odds are that my team will suffer if we introduce Scrum: if Scrum isn't fundamentally flawed, it's still hubris to assume that we'll be the team that finally gets it right.

[0]

> “Listen, if tomorrow we pulled into Biren and someone told you there were shamble-men in the woods, would you believe them?” My father shook his head.

> “What if two people told you?” Another shake.

> Ben leaned forward on his stump. “What if a dozen people told you, with perfect earnestness, that shamble-men were out in the fields, eating—”

> “Of course I wouldn’t believe them,” my father said, irritated. “It’s ridiculous.”

> “Of course it is,” Ben agreed, raising a finger. “But the real question is this: Would you go into the woods?”

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Re:I wrote, “Scrum is a cancer,” and the Internet had though... by dragonwriter on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @02:10PM (#37326384)

> It doesn't particularly matter whether people are disappearing because of shamble-men or because of bears and wolves, if people are regularly disappearing in the woods then you'd do well to steer clear of them.

“Steer clear of things called Scrum” is a very limited guide to how to develop software, actually figuring out what the methodological pitfalls are and addressing them is something that is, I would submit, worth pursuing in more detail, especially for people who have some influence over substantive development methodology choices, rather than only having a choice of whether or not to avoid some place that is imposing a thing that they call “Scrum”. (And, really, you should probably steer clear of any place where being in the dev team gives you no input on substantive methodological decisions irrespective of whether what is imposed is called “Scrum”.)

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Re:I wrote, “Scrum is a cancer,” and the Internet had though... by lolinder on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @02:16PM (#37326492)

I'm not suggesting that "don't call it Scrum" be the final word in software development methodology.

I am suggesting that calling it Scrum will increase your risk of failure, and you'll likely be better off choosing a completely different methodology that has more consistency in implementation and a higher success rate.

By all means let's dig into what specific details of the implemented methodologies work well and which don't! But taking the output of that process and calling it "Real Scrum™" will just lead to further confusion.

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Re:I wrote, “Scrum is a cancer,” and the Internet had though... by dragonwriter on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @04:32PM (#37328627)

> By all means let's dig into what specific details of the implemented methodologies work well and which don't! But taking the output of that process and calling it "Real Scrum™" will just lead to further confusion.

I’m not saying “Real Scrum™” should be the name of the output. I’m saying that diagnosing the problem is obscured by not distinguishing between “what is in the Scrum Guide” and “what someone is doing and calling Scrum”, especially as the latter can be a diversity of mutually incompatible approaches.

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