
Why an Agile Project Manager is Not a Scrum Master - iliastsagklis
http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2012/06/why-agile-project-manager-is-not-scrum.html
======
tferris
Scrum, Agile, all overrated buzz words.

This project management evangelists will never understand that methodologies
won't make things happen.

Motivation drives people. Not daily scrums, agile, obscure names or roles.
Motivation comes through great people, a MVP mindset and none existant project
managers, no methodology and just some basic tools like group chat, Github and
whiteboards.

~~~
alinajaf
In an all technical team, sure. But any time you have to interface with
normals, tools like Scrum are often the only thing standing between you and
"That page that gets their facebook photos and creates a PDF collage out of
them will only take you a few hours right?"

~~~
tferris
Scrum as an interface?? You are talking about good specifications/good
requirements.

For precise requirements I don't need Scrum or any other esoteric methodology.
I just need some people who are able express themselves precisely, clearly and
who can put their specifications in some tool and maintain a proper dialogue
with devs (i.e. Pivotal). They don't need weird names, roles and daily
standups. Scrum is heavy routine which actually wears people out and invented
by people who desperately want to upvalue their shitty projectmanagement job.

The key is: just try to keep people out of your project and company who have
absolutely no clue about tech/Internet/online.

~~~
gouranga
I'd hire you in a flash. You were hit with the clue stick at birth!

~~~
Arelius
Let's be honest, the clue stick beatings probabally came later in life.

------
cageface
I came here to post a grumpy dismissal of all this tinplated ritual but I'm
happy to see that every poster in this thread has beaten me to it.

Good engineers are instantly suspicious of this kind of ceremony because it's
almost always an excuse for an insecure project manager to draw enough
attention to him/herself to justify the office and salary. Certifications with
vaguely mystical Eastern sounding names count -2x.

------
stayhungry
Read the title and tell me that Agile vs. Scrum vs. whatever isn't the new
buzzword-laden bureaucracy. All that time you're spending talking about how
your going to do things and what names you are going to call each other is an
unnecessary distraction from the doing of things.

Leave me and my team out.

~~~
rjsamson
Agreed. When you're spending as much time dealing with the methodology
governing a project as you are actually _doing_ something, something is wrong.

------
gouranga
An agile project manager is the stupidest concept ever.

A lean process requires no ceremonial positions, bean counters or project
trolls.

If you have an agile project manager, welcome to extreme waterfall
programming.

Note: this is from experience of watching lots of people fuck up the whole
agile thing miserably in the following way:
<http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org/>

~~~
slantyyz
I liked this quote from the article:

> Explain that velocity is not a productivity metric

Velocity isn't always about productivity. Sometimes it's about survival.

I worked in a startup (making enterprise software) right after the first
bubble, and the company "practiced" its own version of scrum. We had a small
runway and small sales, and the development team insisted on setting its own
pace. The fact that we had to have stuff to _sell_ to make money for our
paycheques didn't seem to matter to development.

Needless to say, I managed to get the hell out of Dodge before the bank
accounts went empty, but a good chunk of the dev team stuck around, plodding
for months without pay. It took months before the dev team realized no more
money (including backpay) was coming and most of the remaining people finally
left. With no major release to sell.

If velocity is required to make development a financially sustainable effort,
it can't be dismissed outright.

------
MattRogish
"Agile Project Manager"? That's a no-op. A non sequitur.

"Agile", in my opinion, is really about the following things (tactically, not
philosophically, cuz we all know "people over processes" etc.):

* Don't churn requirements * Ship quality software

One could probably argue that the first probably is a necessity of the second
(how can you ship anything of quality if the requirements are shifting under
your feet?) but let's keep them separate.

"Don't churn requirements" -> keep tasks small. don't change your mind 1000
times a week. keep tactical horizons short (e.g. don't estimate long-range).

"Ship quality software" -> automated tests. code reviews/pair programming.
just-in-time lightweight specs. integrated business users, design, ux, qa with
development. retrospectives/kaizen.

------
leothekim
Sounds like most of the commenters here would subscribe to this philosophy:
<http://programming-motherfucker.com/>

Myself included.

------
epoxyhockey
I quit my last job on account of them moving to an _agile process_ , but not
before my company had spent thousands of dollars being trained on the process.
Snake oil.

------
parfe
I was confused how Agile made it back to HN, but after a quick glance the
reason is clear.

Enterprise Java has discovered Agile.

~~~
gouranga
Enterprise java these days is like Germany after the wall came down I.e. A
much better place. agile is still Auschwitz.

~~~
wwosik
Sorry, but that analogy is disgusting.

~~~
gouranga
Just a FYI, I've been to Auschwitz personally, had two relatives starve to
death there as children (much worse than getting gassed if you ask me) under
Soviet control in Jan '45 and three survive. TBH the two who are still alive
laugh about it and pull their trousers down to Germans regularly in Koln where
they live. Getting the trousers up again is quite hard in your late 80's...

Please don't be disgusted for other people who are perfectly capable of
handling it. Most of the crap you here is from the 1% of vocal people on the
subject. The others think it was a dark time, but shit happens (yes really bad
shit but there you go).

(I've also suffered 5 years of agile).

------
Tomis02
My natural barf reflex was triggered by seeing both 'Agile' and 'Scrum master'
in the same sentence. Thanks for upvoting guys.

------
alexro
The whole agile methodology is so abused nowadays that old waterfall approach
looks like kidding in comparison.

------
jph98
Yawn!

