The company I work for has gone fully ‘Agile’ now. Before we were just using some Agile principles, but not really adopting the full strategy.

Over the last year this has changed. We now have non-technical scrum masters, where as this role was done by senior and experienced devs before. My calendar is full of planning meetings, retrospectives, reviews, ad-hoc reviews, software demos. The ‘business’ are now requesting frequent updates.
At the stand-up, I’m reporting back my previous day to someone who has no idea what I am talking about. The scrum master just seems to act as enabler, literally re-asking my questions to the most senior member of the team. Thankfully I have moved from the team where we were doing twice daily updates (and I was the most senior member of the team).
There seems to be a lot of talking about work rather than doing work. Lots of energy seems to be going into readying a 2 weekly demo, rather than just doing a demo when it’s ready/appropriate.

All of this combined with working from home and doing everything via Zoom etc. feels like I’m being micromanaged. One thing I found I really like about working from home was being able to concentrate on things. But I feel I’m being constantly interrupted and having to update on things. Also everyone in the team having to be involved at every stage makes things very tedious.

I look forward to ‘the next big thing’ in software dev management. I think the problem with Agile is that someone has tried to formalise a way of working (small, flexible teams) but in doing so has broken the essence of what makes it work.

Anyone else feel the same?

Yes, exactly the same. It is ludicrous and beyond micro-management. We spend so much time in meetings and explaining what we are doing over and over again.

Utter bullshit in my opinion but some people are making very good careers out of it.

Agile works well when it’s done right, the problem is that everyone does it wrong.

It always goes to hell as soon as you get PMs trying to be scrum masters, in my experience.

As someone who is a Product Owner I understand the view. Personally it works for me and has stopped developers giving me stuff I didn’t want or ask for. We mainly work in 4 week sprints are yours shorter?

I only read 1 line and gave up. Maybe that says more about Mr than it does you

Utter bullshit in my opinion

Agile methodology can be done badly just as any other management idea can be done badly.

It is NOT meant to be spending all your time in meetings (obviously, as this is stupid). The fact that your managers haven’t figured this out suggests that they are rubbish managers. I mean who would ever think it was a good idea to spend tons of time in meetings instead of working?

I think the problem with Agile is that someone has tried to formalise a way of working (small, flexible teams) but in doing so has broken the essence of what makes it work.

No, your company has broken it. When done properly it works well. You work, you talk to the people in your small team, then once a day you have a standup meeting where you share what you’re doing. So you have a small number of people saying ‘I’m working on this’ or ‘I need this’. They are called stand-ups because they’re meant to be so short that there’s no point sitting down or getting a room.

The idea is that instead of spending forever getting bogged down in planning hell, you just get on with it and figure it out – and then if it turns out to be taking longer your deadline will extend – but crucially, your management will know exactly why it’s taking longer and will be able to see what the new now more accurate delivery date will be. The longer the project goes on the better you know your velocity and your confidence in your end date goes up.

If it’s not like that, your management are making a balls-up.

Who are you updating on everything and why are you being asked? Do you have a Kanban board?

yeah i hate Agile. It’s just the latest management buzzword. Everyone has a different idea of what it means, no-one really knows, and we never seem to do it “right”.

The purpose of the daily standup, is more to focus you on what your going to do for the day, rather for the others.

It always goes to hell as soon as you get PMs trying to be scrum masters, in my experience.

That’s pretty much what’s happened.

Although, the best scrum master we’ve had was someone who started being a dev, went to PM, then became a scrum master as they understood all sides. One time when we were up against it they were debugging environment issues, doing some testing etc. They could update the business on exactly what was going on.

We mainly work in 4 week sprints are yours shorter?

We used have to 6 week sprints. They are now 2 weeks.

When done properly it works well

I believe it can

You work, you talk to the people in your small team, then once a day you have a standup meeting where you share what you’re doing. So you have a small number of people saying ‘I’m working on this’ or ‘I need this’. They are called stand-ups because they’re meant to be so short that there’s no point sitting down or getting a room.

That’s what we had, before…..

Who are you updating on everything and why are you being asked?

Me personally, just the scrum master and lead dev. The team as a whole, business stakeholders.

Do you have a Kanban board?

Of course

Even within the same company different people can have very different expectations.  I’ve had both good and bad agile experiences in the same (large, non-tech) company.  It does feel like some people expect PM’s to be good agile scrum masters but they’re so used to Gantt charts etc they just can’t look beyond them.

I always thought the purpose off the stand-up was just to make sure no-one was waiting for something from someone else etc and to make sure everyone was being productive.

It can be as frustrating hell, or a brilliant way of working… all comes down to the SM, in my opinion. You can see why the good ones earn good money. A poor one will make you want to quit your job several times a week. Get rid of them… seriously… if devs and product owners are frustrated by a SM, you have to be ruthless and get rid, or you’ll just all dig a big hole of personal animosity and broken product.

Because that’s what we had, before

Right, but your managers wanted to know when their product was going to be delivered, and you said ‘ooh, dunno, X months maybe?’ and they don’t like this because they need to budged and coordinate other stuff. So someone came up with a way of managing this uncertainty, and called it Agile.

The bottom line with managers is that some of them think their job is to make their underlings do what their bosses want, and others think their job is to let their underlings do what they need to do and take the heat from them.

If you have the first kind, it makes no difference what methodology you use, your job will always be shit because they will always be looking for ways to beat you up and put pressure on you. Because they work for their bosses, not for you.

I always thought the purpose off the stand-up was just to make sure no-one was waiting for something from someone else etc and to make sure everyone was being productive.

Yes, I didn’t used to have a problem with them but they feel very different now. I think it’s the lack of feedback that a non-technical scrum master can give, it’s more or less “Thanks”. Rather than “You’ve got X working, how did you manage that? That’s pretty good given we were working with Y”

Right, but your managers wanted to know when their product was going to be delivered, and you said ‘ooh, dunno, X months maybe?’ and they don’t like this because they need to budged and coordinate other stuff. So someone came up with a way of managing this uncertainty, and called it Agile.

I think the fundamental mistake is that all teams have been changed. Some worked just fine, others had big issues. However, these issues were rooted in the software implementation (v. poor), hence changes and developments were very involved and always took a long time. The software is a collection of services for CRM, so all need to change to do a ‘new’ thing. Some services are badly implemented or had dependencies on uncooperative teams outside of the ‘dev’ sphere (e.g. catalogue reference data).

Another problem with using Agile methodology is that managers think it means you’ll never have to make Version 2 of the software, you can just go from sprint to sprint making add-ons, fixes, bodges, bodges for the bodges, etc when the most efficient thing to do would have been to say, ‘We’ve got this version of the software working, now lets start again from scratch using the lessons learned from our first attempt using a design that will allow us to improve functionality in the future.’

Our company are drowning in technical debt at the moment to the point where we haven’t released anything for more than 2 years.

Funnily enough, when I started in the development team I said, ‘Maybe we should stop adding onto this software since nobody really understands how it works anymore because it’s become too convoluted and tangled and start working on the next version. It might take a year but I think we’ll be in better shape’

To which the manager replied, ‘Companies that don’t release new software for a year go out of business.’

Well, it’s been 2 years of trying to get an update to work and we still seem to be in business.

molgrips
Member
Who are you updating on everything and why are you being asked? Do you have a Kanban board?

We have daily stand-ups that are run by the project manager and last half an hour every day.

We do have a Kanban board and we chat over that, going through each person one at a time. We are not purely software, we are an engineering R&D team. So, we may have to listen to the PCB layout engineer telling us all about pad size and number of layers, a mech engineer telling us about material strength, an electronic engineer talking about EMC issue, a test engineer talking about breaking things……

Stand-ups, retrospectives, planning meetings. If we are in the stand-up and there is an issue, the immediate response is ‘we’ll arrange a meeting for that’. We used to just have a quick chat between the interested parties and get on with it. Now we have to have the project manager plus a couple of engineering managers, then the engineers to discuss it and raise some tasks.

There seems to be a lot of talking about work rather than doing work.

This seems to be the way of things these days, especially in major corporations and not exclusively in IT.

Hard to call agile a new thing when it’s been around for more than 20 years.

When you get your implementation of it wrong, you need to go back to the principles of it, look against your current activities and if it’s not helping it, bin it

Just wait until you go SAFe, then it’s PI planning, IP iterations, scrum of scrum, problem solving workshops, system demos. Add in Release Train Engineers and it’s all aboard the ART! I’ve just received my SAFe Scrum Master certification, peep peep!

Scrum master 🤣🤣🤣 WTF!

#differentworld….

I think remote/home working has not helped. I was on a project where we were organised by management into teams they thought would work. These were multi-disciplinary, i.e. people with knowledge of different services in the stack, rather than a team full of people working on just one service.
It was a bit bizarre though. There was an obsession with having 3 teams (max. size perhaps?). It lasted 2 weeks before we reorganised ourselves into 2 teams that had the resources we needed. We could do this as we were in the office and there were no restrictions on Jira for assigning tasks etc. Also they only had 2 scrum masters anyway (one did two teams). So we forced the issue. We delivered the first stage of the project on time but there was still a lingering “yeah, but you’ll have to go into 3 teams for the next stage”….3 teams appeared again, this time with 3 different scrum masters. This also coincided with lockdown and then everything fell apart. Nothing was delivered on time. We scraped similar resources back together. This was through negotiation with the scrum masters this time though, so people were in and out of teams all of the time. Remote working made the scrum masters very much the gate keepers. People came into the team but didn’t/couldn’t stay long, so I was repeatedly going over stuff with people new to the team. I reckon in the time I spent doing this I could have done their work myself.

I should also say that in the last year we gained an Agile coach/consultant to whisper in the ear of top management. Not sure if that relates to what I see today….hmm

Do we work at the same company? 🙂

I know what you mean, we went through this quite a while ago, and I’m still not a big fan of it.

Some key things that might help

– Use the processes in place. Be vocal in retro’s and daily standups about the issues. The scrum master is there to help you and the team, if they don’t, they aren’t really doing their job. Especially complain in retro’s…since that’s what it’s for.

– Find the influential people who will listen. Probably lot’s of people will hold the same views, and the more people that shout, the easier/quicker things seem to get resolved

– Suggest some ideas such as ‘focus time’. There’s a few tools we’re trialing that re-organize calendar meetings to maximise focus-time (it’s working quite well)

– Only accept meetings with agenda’s. If you don’t think you would be allowed todo this, bring it up in retro’s and get the team backing – make meetings more efficient.

The biggest one, is probably to aim for continuous improvement – nothing should be set in stone (including the scrum/agile processes themselves).

What you’ve described does sound a bit hellish, OP 🙁

I think “Agile” per the Agile Manifesto is a Good Idea, and when I’ve worked in teams using the methodology it has been broadly pretty good.

The only real downside was that the daily standup could drag on a bit occasionally. But equally, it was good for team cohesion, and for keeping everyone in the loop. Certainly I never felt particularly micro managed.

I think as others have said, a lot boils down to the implementation. I think if I were a PHB type at your place and you’d organised yourselves into two teams and gone on to deliver on time I’d be tempted to leave well enough alone and let you get on with it.

I work as an agile coach. It sounds very much like your scrum masters and your coach don’t really know what they are doing. This is sad, but not unusual. You should absolutely not feel like you are being micromanaged, that’s a sign that something is very wrong.

I work as an agile coach

Don’t take this the wrong way, but qualifies you to do so?

I am genuinely interested to know what people who do that role have done before and how they get into it. One might think that they would have many years of successful (and some failed) project delivery cycles in different companies, because essentially they’re playing with the future of the company they advise.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but qualifies you to do so

34 years in software development. Programmer, DBA, systems programmer, architect, manager, Director of Software Engineering. Experience of pretty much all the methods that came before agile. Led agile adoptions at more than one company. Worked on agile projects with up to 120 people. Lots of reading and discussion with others in the field. And I like to think I’m not stupid.

But it was a fair question.

I know an agile coach. He was a dev for many years then a senior dev.

I don’t think they are playing with the future of the company, really. It’s just a different way to manage projects. It’s not one thing that you have to spend a huge amount of money committing to. You just try it out, build your own skills, figure out what’s going to work. As I understand it, it’s a meta-approach to management. You use the framework to work out what you want, and no two projects are likely to work out the same. That’s why it’s called Agile.

34 years in software development. Programmer, DBA, systems programmer, architect, manager, Director of Software Engineering. Experience of pretty much all the methods that came before agile. Led agile adoptions at more than one company. Worked on agile projects with up to 120 people. Lots of reading and discussion with others in the field. And I like to think I’m not stupid.

That’s the answer I was hoping for and the sort of background I think is necessary.

I’m not sure our Agile coach is even 34 years old….

It’s just a different way to manage projects.

I think that viewing it as “just another way to manage projects” is one of the things that leads to the scenario described by the OP. There is rather more to it than that.

I know an agile coach. He was a dev for many years then a senior dev.

I think it is a massive negative when you lose incredibly talented technical brains to project management (scrum masters or whatever you want to call it).

I think these positions should be paid less than the technical positions because most engineering managers and similar positions are taken by very good technical people who just end up being meeting stooges/JIRA shufflers.

I know several very intelligent PHD qualified chartered engineers who now do no engineering, they are just resource managers earning more than they did before.

I’m not sure our Agile coach is even 34 years old….

I don’t think he has to be, he just has to talk to and listen to the ones who are.

I think that viewing it as “just another way to manage projects” is one of the things that leads to the scenario described by the OP. There is rather more to it than that.

I disagree – I understand the level of organisational change it requires, but that’s ultimately what it is. I think the OP’s situation comes from it not being fully understood.

I think it is a massive negative when you lose incredibly talented technical brains to project management (scrum masters or whatever you want to call it).

The guy in question wanted to move, because he was fed up of people cocking up agile methodology.

I work as an agile coach

Don’t take this the wrong way, but qualifies you to do so?

I am genuinely interested to know what people who do that role have done before and how they get into it. One might think that they would have many years of successful (and some failed) project delivery cycles in different companies, because essentially they’re playing with the future of the company they advise.

The best post of the thread. There are waaaaay too many 2 day certification imposters giving agile ways of working a bad name. The classic test is when they are more coach than domain expert – turning the question around instead of giving concrete options based on battle scarred and hard won development experience. You shouldn’t be allowed to work as a product owner, scrum master or agile coach unless you’ve served time as a developer (in the Scrum sense of the word). All IMHO of course.

I don’t think they are playing with the future of the company

It is where I work. We write and maintain all of our CRM stuff in house so we can respond to new or changing markets. There have been some requirements turned around in no time at all, e.g. for Black Friday. Outsourcing to a 3rd party couldn’t match it. It’s one of the reasons I like working there.

It sounds as if you are at the mercy of your bad legacy software design rather than any agile coach.. But good management should take that into account I feel.

You shouldn’t be allowed to work as a product owner, scrum master or agile coach unless you’ve served time as a developer (in the Scrum sense of the word)

Well this is what I thought…until we had scrum masters coming in, straight out of uni.

Our Agile coach was asked by a scrum master if maybe he would step into one of the other scrum master roles while they were recruiting. It was a genuine question. He laughed off the suggestion.

Chuck GDS into the mix for added fun 🙂

It sounds as if you are at the mercy of your bad legacy software design rather than any agile coach

Actually, some brilliant stuff has been done despite the legacy software. Really clever stuff to make it do more than it should and keep the lights on. This was all before we went full ‘Agile’. I am now a bit worried that we will start to lose the edge. That said something had to change, but I feel they’ve gone too far in the wrong direction and delivery will start to suffer.