People realised the wrong shit was taking too long to get done.
so bad management then? The rest of your post has a lot of the word salad I was talking about. Waterfalls, agile, scrum. Just no need for it. Trying to make something really ****ing boring sound exciting! Marketing for the workplace 😀
Whilst co-locating isn't mandatory for Scrum it was always recommended when I was trained. Hence short physical alignments made sense as everyone was together on a site. It was also easier to read the body language of the team and what wasn't being said out loud.
I think this practice has been carried over into todays more frequent situations where there are more virtual teams not physically together.
so bad management then? The rest of your post has a lot of the word salad I was talking about. Waterfalls, agile, scrum. Just no need for it. Trying to make something really **** boring sound exciting! Marketing for the workplace 😀
You would make a refreshing manager. Just walking round the office all day yelling, 'Just do some shit!' at all the developers.
To be fair, I've had worse managers.
so bad management then? The rest of your post has a lot of the word salad I was talking about. Waterfalls, agile, scrum. Just no need for it. Trying to make something really **** boring sound exciting! Marketing for the workplace
'bad management' is an overly simplistic view of the issues that have been rife in software development for decades. it is also one that is incredibly hard to resolve. People have tried, and it turns out changing the entire way of working is one of the answers.
It's nothing to do with trying to make anything sound exciting, it really isn't. Why have you chosen to focussed on the specific words you don't really like rather than the whole message?
You say there is no need for a different working practice. I work in an environment that categorically proves you wrong. You are entitled to your opinion by all means, but the entire point of my post is such opinons come from experiencing poor attempts at working within the agile/scrum framework. One could argue the reason it doesn't work in many organisations is also bad management.
I’m taking the piss. I can tell you work in IT. No sense of humour either! 😉
I spent my entire working life in IT Project Management and don't miss the bullshit described above.
I still can't reconcile the desire to 'get shit done' (AKA Agile) with managements/clients/everybloodybodies insistence on pre defined/agreed timescales and delivery budgets.
Maybe it's just me and after 40 years of doing it, still don't really get how the two can coexist.
Oh and as for the 'you don't understand Agile because you've never see it done well' brigade. Yeah right, granny+eggs+suck sonny 🤣
I’m taking the piss. I can tell you work in IT. No sense of humour either!
Yea, good joke.
You've been around long enough to know that humour is rarely conveyed will when written down. If the joke didn't land, that's on you :-p
none of them are about or for me, they are for the team
👏🏼
Sounds like you’re a good scrum master. To be fair to others, it’s often managers that mistake scrum masters for project leaders, not the stand up participants. That’s where pressures that result in creep in the role tend to come from… “above”.
It's about comfort, avoiding responsibility, moving people away from decisions, and the illusion of control.
But at the same time, if you do nothing about it you are complicit in that.
Personally I would be screaming at them but I'm senior/established/confident in my position enough to do that.
I spent my entire working life in IT Project Management and don’t miss the bullshit described above.
I still can’t reconcile the desire to ‘get shit done’ (AKA Agile) with managements/clients/everybloodybodies insistence on pre defined/agreed timescales and delivery budgets.
Maybe it’s just me and after 40 years of doing it, still don’t really get how the two can coexist.
That's because it requires the whole organisation to be structured around doing it that way. It takes a number of years and significant investment to transition fully to the methodology. This is why most organisations fail to implement it properly and you get the worst parts of it becoming standard.
Oh and as for the ‘you don’t understand Agile because you’ve never see it done well’ brigade. Yeah right, granny+eggs+suck sonny 🤣
So you've never seen it done well then I take it? 🤣
Oh and as for the ‘you don’t understand Agile because you’ve never see it done well’ brigade.
I guess it might be true but it would be nice to see it done well to demonstrate that.
In my experience a good team will deliver whatever the alleged methodology is whilst a shit team will fail but just in a slightly different way.
An example is the "Scrum masters actually actively working to unblock things". That needs them to have a reasonable understanding of both the system architecture and also who really counts when getting stuff fixed. Whereas most of the time they really aint anything other than a meeting secretary.
Or the "which are then verified by the client and either signed off". Depends on what you are doing really. I have dealt with some horrendous screwups since the devs were building for that one sprint feature and so failed to think what the actual end goal was and so designed it in a way which failed to scale/handle the additional requirements everyone knew was going to be needed.
The Agile [Mod: removed] usually defend their patch with:
'You've never seen it done well so...' usually followed up with
'the whole organisation/world/client etc need to change...'
I served my time in Consultancy. Charging Clients multi £m for the privelage then telling them they didn't get it/we'd all failed because they were uneducated probably wasn't the best idea.
Agile can give the impression of progress which is great in a Consultancy setting where Clients want shiny things and we want stage paying. Spending years up front doing boring stuff like Requirements, Design etc isn't exciting but as they say, time spent planning is rarely wasted...
I'm (was) happy with either Waterfall or Agile but suggesting one is always the best (only) way over the other is a bit blinkered and slavishly following processes in a zealot like manner, doesn't solve the fundamental issue. Rarely are we allowed enough time/£'s to properly define time/cost/scope as management get all twitchy over extracting the business benefit (which is often tenuous to say the least) and therefore justifying their very expensive decisions.
TL:DR One is simple prototyping the other design/planning etc up front. Both have their merits and part to play.
Scrum Master
welcome to 2023, your language is no longer appropriate.
Ultimately, back in the context of the OP, I am relaying my experience.
I've spent a lot of time in an environment that, based purely on history, used a waterfall delivery method. It worked really well. They attempted a move to agile, it went really badly and is the basis of my experience on 'Badgile'
I worked for another organisation that claimed to be agile. They were not, the used it to remove some of the best elemnts of a traditional waterfall delivery approach without any benefit other than saving costs. They were also terrible for misusing the scrum.
Until I worked in an environment that was shaped almost from the ground up to deliver using agile principles and scrum framework I simply didn't understand how it could be a good thing. We still don't get it all right, but for the software we are delivering Agile is the right choice. It starts to show cracks for time critical deliverables against industry standards, and it is then that the haivng experienced project managers can bridge the differences.
Both have their merits and part to play.
I agree with this completely. There is no right answer, its all situation dependant.
For balance, I've worked on and seen traditional (Waterfall) and Agile projects fail, a poorly run project/product can fail either way. The rest of our organisation work in a Waterfall approach as there's a lot of manufacturing going on, we build the software to go along with it. I like the phrase the head of department used the other day, 'Agile isn't perfect, but it's better for us than the alternatives'.
I prefer Agile coach, but technically it's not the title my 'inclusive' company offer, I should resign in protest for you soob?
And going the other direction, projects fail through use of inappropriate processes eg Prince 2 being slavishly followed on your £50k of dev because that's what Local Authority xyz mandates... The admin overhead would probably cost £50k...
It's all about what's appropriate to the work in hand and suggesting one single approach is either defective or a panacea is plain wrong.
I work as a Programme Director for a large multinational, the Digital team fall under my remit (since the end of November).
I struggle with the lack of accountability that lies within Agile. The fact that the end picture is not known from the end of a design and planning stage means it’s difficult to predict cost, time and the required resources. The more complex a project is the more this is compounded.
There are significant advantages with Agile, bringing to market products faster is obviously hugely beneficial to the end client, but it does again bring in other challenges to ensure on large Programmes that there is a cohesive workforce and not a fragmented one.
And from a quick read of one of my books…..as there is no clear vision of what the final product will look like can result in a project having no finite end date.
On a personal level, my digital team who I only recently inherited have cost the business millions on a product that is now past any roi. Agile isn’t just down to the Dev’s, the business, product owners, TPM’s, testers etc, have to all play along nicely. When this doesn’t occur then you end up a project that just keeps continuing to make the same mistakes, month after month.
I keep out of scrums, but I have had to assign an old school project manager to my failing digital project. We had to bring in additional controls, specifically around cost/time planning.
I completely understand from the Software Dev’s perspective that Agile is fundamentally a better working practice than waterfall, and I genuinely agree with the sentiment. But that doesn’t mean I agree with the lack of accountability (and governance and controls)…..but I am old school and from an infrastructure background.
Dev’s flame away!!
Our team daily standup is fully async. Just drop a short message in slack about what we’re up to
Skiving tbh
and any blockers
People keep asking me to do boring stuff
I have no idea what this thread is about, thank god I do a job without all this shit 😳
Christ work is such an awful waste of your life isn't it?
But that doesn’t mean I agree with the lack of accountability (and governance and controls)…..but I am old school
Can't say I consider there to be any more or less accountability in agile Vs waterfall.
Christ work is such an awful waste of your life isn’t it?
I am rapidly coming to that conclusion, I was dreaming of moving to a hillside somewhere warm and growing my own food while enduring a meeting this morning.
Chaos = cash......
When I’m sat in my office alone and bored – just me and the dog – I remind myself I don’t have to deal with this sort of shit! 🙂
+1
The fact that the end picture is not known from the end of a design and planning stage means it’s difficult to predict cost, time and the required resources. The more complex a project is the more this is compounded
Hallelujah. Not just me then. 👍
And coincidently 'they' still want to pin your balls to the wall re: time/cost/scope and hold you accountable for any variances...
We just drink coffee/tea at the start of the day, chat rubbish about what's happening and then get to work once the last mug is empty.
But we don't work in IT and the only waterfall we deal with is the water falling off a cliff type and that is delivering very well with the recent rain.
Aye. My highfalootin early morning decisions are limited to toast or cereal these days 😁
Totally different situation but when called to wasteful useless meetings at work I would tot up what they cost - this could be a possible way of getting senior management to focus? Often that meeting could be many hundreds of pounds - of folks time. The other thing I would do which is maybe less appropriate is refuse to go stating I had work to do 🙂
Or play buzzword bingo!
This thread started so well,a light playful thing with a box of smiles.
Now look at it 🙃🤣🤣
Luckily I moved out of development (or programming as it was known then) as SSADM was becoming the de-facto methodology, but have audited a number of projects/programmes since that use it and other waterfall approaches and then 'agile'.
Usual issue is crap implementation of the methodology and/or inadequate time/budget/resource - nothing changes, just the name of the methodology 🙂
.. there is no clear vision of what the final product will look like
Agreed, it cuts off when the thing you build does the job it needs to 'well enough'. You assign £xxx to the project and build till the cash runs out, or it's making you enough to continue.
the lack of accountability
Agile doesn't remove any of the RACI groups from old school project management, but who is accountable can depend on the organisation, we have a 'head of' who is accountable, task leads who act as technical product owners and are responsible, we have depedent teams in other areas of the business who are consulted and stakeholders who are informed.
I appreciate there's a lot of opinion and argument about this, but it's STW, it's what we do. I'm not 100% right about everything and I do not have all the answers, but I've been around enough to know what I think works (20+ years experience in Software).
Dev’s flame away!!
Shall I start with the errant apostrophe? 😁
I'm not a dev and haven't been for some time now, but my understanding of 'agile' is this:
Traditional development: I've built this, there you go. It's in support now, bye!
Agile development: I'm building this, what do you think so far? See you tomorrow!
It doesn't need an explosion in an Alphabetti Spaghetti factory, it's just checking back to confirm that you're on the right track. Or am I wildly off the mark?
Well given you're using plain English I'd say you probably are.
As for the buiness bull bingo, it’s a short meeting where people should ‘stand-up’ – it’s hardly convoluted.
And yet, it took another post to explain exactly what 'stand up' meant in this context.
Scrums, scrum masters, stand ups - why do they need stupid names? Morning/daily planning meeting/update works fine for everyone else who has a meeting chairperson.
I work in nuclear and even when the plant was running we didn't spend an hour on any morning meeting.
Nobody is criticising the way of working so much as the ridiculous 'reinventing the wheel' opaque language around it. If you have to spend so long actually explaining what are actually fairly pedestrian concepts then yes, you are snorkeling in a slurry pit of bullshit.
Being subjected to a 'marble run' soon 🤷 I have no idea of what will happen.... Or what one is.
And yet, it took another post to explain exactly what ‘stand up’ meant in this context
Well my intention was to point out that the clue was in the name. I take your point though, I think the Scrum framework wanted to differentiate itself from other styles of running work. It also makes a big deal out of stand-up not being an status update, so daily update really wouldn't work.
I work in nuclear and even when the plant was running we didn’t spend an hour on any morning meeting.
Glad to hear it, imagine spending an hour deciding what to do about the imminent meltdown!
you are snorkeling in a slurry pit of bullshit
I'll run it up the flagpole and see what flack it draws from the troops ... I've read Politics and the English language, I know we are all too often guilty of it and I apologise unreservedly for it.
I completely understand from the Software Dev’s perspective that Agile is fundamentally a better working practice than waterfall
I wouldnt say that. Its entirely dependent on how the teams actually work. Having some scrum master try to micromanage whilst needing you to do half their job for them is as irritating as an old school PM doing the same.
Likewise a BA who cant write requirements is a problem in either case although if anything its worse in agile since they use the excuse of it being incremental to cover for them not having a scoobies what the actual aim of the project is.
Some people run without standing up?
Rimmer : [reading the test answers he's written on his arms] What does this MEAN? What does any of this mean? I've covered my body in complete and total and utter and absolute nonsense! Gibberish!
Daily scrum for the week and a half I have been here has been between 40min and 1.5hr. all at 09:00 as well.
It's like this mate.
Your project.
Forked.
Totally forked.
Forking totally forking forked.
Could be worse.
You could be responsible for it being forked.
I think Agile starts from a closer framework to reality. Unless you're just copying another existing product, you never actually know what you want as an end product and humans are pretty rubbish at predicting things. The iterating towards a (never ending) final solution based on continual feedback from prototypes etc, seems much more likely to deliver something genuinely useful in the end.
A product which has been refined based on real customer feedback from prototypes it more likely to be genuinely useful than one which just appears complete having been kept under wraps for years.
As for the never ending bit, products only really end when they stop selling enough to cover ongoing maintenance / development costs. It's a commercial decision rather than 'is the specification complete?'.
Going back to the OP's original issue, crap managers are crap at whatever they do, no matter the framework. Good managers just make it work seemlessly and don't get in the way.
I think when you have somebody with the title of scrum master you’ve sailed way beyond silly point and are lost in the deep, dark waters of absurdity
Preumably you don't work in any kind of software role? Whilst not every company has Scrum Masters I think every software engineer is familiar with the concept. What's your field? Does it have any type of manager role? Are there different managers with different responsibilities? Because Scrum Master is just a manager with a specific set of responsibilities. The expectation is I could walk into the OP's organisation and know immediately what the Scrum Master is supposed to be doing (hint its not 1hr long daily meetings!).
so bad management then? The rest of your post has a lot of the word salad I was talking about. Waterfalls, agile, scrum. Just no need for it. Trying to make something really **** boring sound exciting! Marketing for the workplace 😀
No, just because you don't understand something doesn't mean its "word salad". Im all for calling out made up nonsense and frothy bullshit when people talk about ringfencing the unicorn but to those who need to understand then Waterfall v's Agile is like asking a builder if he will use bricks or concrete for the walls. You can scream "stop being poncy - just build walls" but it makes a big difference if everyone knows how this is supposed to work. Everyone in the team knows what the implications of those words are, contractors who arrive for a three week job know how it operates. The business which is going to work with you on the project knows how you operate and how to adapt to you. And "Waterfall" or "old school" project management wasn't necessarily bad, it still has its place, but some people realised that if you do things totally differently that for some types of project it was better. You don't want a medical device or flight software that's "mostly complete, we'll add the rarely used bits's next month" but if you want a piece of forum software you don't want to wait so long for it to get created that the internet browsers have all changed and its no use. If you believe you can manage software better than either of these without using "buzzwords" you should make money. if you can define that into a simple management course and teach others you'll get super rich. I work with a lot of organisations doing both Agile and Waterfall, with Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Sprints, etc. And I also work with organisations who have no particular project management style and are full of people who just want shit done. I assure you that regardless of which structure the company adopts they are all way more likely to launch something that works than those who are in a state of "managed chaos".
Totally different situation but when called to wasteful useless meetings at work I would tot up what they cost – this could be a possible way of getting senior management to focus?
Whenever we have a totally pointless meeting with lots of people I do a back of the envelope calculation of the cost of the meeting - write it on the board and ask people if they think this meeting was worth spending that much money on. The answer is almost universally no. People either say "I don't need to be here next time" or come better prepared so next week's meeting is more productive. [The one time this doesn't work is if its a contract paying by billable hour because even if it achieved nothing it usually generated revenue!]. When you get brave you can do this in meetings that your boss called too - but you need to know them well enough to know how it will go down.
As a rugby fan we all know the scrum is full of fat boys who cheat.
Poly - why use language to make things hard to understand - there is a lot of this going on. Plain english is best to avoid misunderstandings
why use language to make things hard to understand – there is a lot of this going on. Plain english is best to avoid misunderstandings
What’s hard to understand about the language being used?
I just see it as a subset of terminology used by certain industries. It may not make sense to people of employed in those industries but that is fine. I don’t understand a lot of language specific to industries I am not working in.
I'm with poly on the wordy stuff. If you said your bottom bracket bearings had failed we'd all know what you mean even though someone outside the cycling world would say that a plain English version is "the spinny bit that lets the pedals go round". Or in a road team we all know what a domestique or lead out rider does - is that so different from calling someone a scrum master or having a daily stand up meeting?
As for agile itself, for me the problem is having a team that has its work planned weeks in advance working alongside a (B)agile project that wants our support but won't confirm how much time it wants and when. Sadly nobody up the food chain will make the tough call to fix this one way or another.
Language is often used to make it harder for others to understand as used as a "gatekeeper"
there is no need for all this jargon - its meaningless. My work world was full of it. People using fancy language to make themselves feel clever. It gets in the way of doing stuff
I also used to send jargon filled emails back to the person who sent it asking for plain english versuions
Yes some of you are used to this language as I got used to in in the medical world - but that does not excuse it. Using plain language is better and gives rise to less misunderstandings
I hate Agile.
I used to try to be positive about the benefits it could bring like iterative development, not deploying something long after the requirements were gathered and fancy MacBooks, but now I just hate it.
Yes I'm an old fossil but at least they're giving us something useful now, like oil for making the plastic pig to throw at each other so people can have their turn to say something nobody else is interested in at the daily stand-up before sodding off into the horizon after delivering something that's not what's actually needed (technical term: MVP)
EDIT: STW are selling cleats? Cool 🙂