
Agile Scrum is not working - signa11
https://iism.org/article/agile-scrum-is-not-working-51
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korginator
Maybe I was spectacularly unlucky, but in the last twenty or so years working
with different companies and teams claiming to do agile, most were focused on
the motions and the tools (stand-ups and Jira) as opposed to the spirit and
intention.

Agile was and is nearly always used as an excuse to continue to make mid-
sprint changes and push more work to the dev teams "because we are agile".

An understanding of the level of support required at the leadership level and
the accountability that follows is rarely understood.

Interestingly over the past few years I am seeing more organizations migrate
towards an iterative model with monthly cycles, and I've seen this work well
with distributed teams with a wide range of roles (dev, UX, validation, tech
pub, devops, etc.)

In contrast, I also continue to see true scrum work extremely well with some
teams. They are all relatively small (6-8ish) with strong support from the
EVPs or C*Os, mostly operating from a single location or timezone, have a good
rapport with each other and openness up the chain of command as well as
horizontally with the stakeholders.

That, to me has a large cultural component. Some teams can get there, and many
won't.

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replyifuagree
Yeah companies don't change their basic modus operandi just because they
bought Agile training.

Add to that problem that most legacy companies are very date driven and you
really end up with Date Scrum where the team is pushed to get really anything
out by a date. Then tack on people focusing on the parts they like - Agile
means I can change things mid project! - the result of which is a scope moving
chaos monster that delivers bad software by date certain.

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replyifuagree
I posted this comment on another Scrum thread, and I think it applies here as
well, especially on HN as lots of people on here are actually trying to make
something brand new with no customer to iterate with.

>Amplified learning is critical for a startup because you are searching for
value in dark space. To find value you have to package up attempts and fire
them into the dark space to see if anything hits. Fire the value attempt when
it is ready, not when some artificial sprint interval finishes!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23191890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23191890)

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apercu
For many projects that I've done that are "agile" the budget seems to go out
the window....

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lonelappde
What's better-- the right project over budget, or a broken nothing that is
under budget?

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replyifuagree
That right project over budget is clearly what we want! I do claim that teams
who have don't have a way to iteratively validate their increment are just
going to deliver the wrong thing over budget though.

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smackay
So Agile Scrum is not working so what you really need is Value Scrum.

Since we are clearly in a post-agile world. There appears to be little added
value in reiterating all the reasons people believe that the management of
software development is not working. So what is going to replace it?

