POTPOURRI INTRO DEV
POTPOURRI
Weaponization of Scrum? In MY department? It's more likely than you think...
This week, I did something I've never done while working a scheduled job: I decided to take the last 3 days of the week off on only 1 day's notice.
The reason : Complete burnout brought on by our company's implementation of Scrum.
Hard facts : Our standups suck. Our retros suck. Our reviews suck. Our refinements can be useful, but they are usually 75%+ wasted motion. And yes I'm ready to eat the metaphorical turd salad many true believers reading this would like to serve me.
"Scrum works if it is done right, so your company must not do it right!" or, to pull out a Malcolm in the Middle meme: "The future is now, old man!"
And I can't argue with those points because, honestly, I've never seen "Scrum" work "right". But spoiler alert - the majority of coders I respect and trust have had universally awful experiences with Scrum as well. Notice I didn't shit on Agile; more on that later - but I do have some thoughts on how corporate "weaponization" of Scrum got us to this point.
Enter : the internet, circa 1997. AOL had muscled its way into casual homes through a combination of aggressive mail-order advertising and reducing their prices notably. Shortly thereafter, seemingly bottomless venture capital and the false-prophet known as "banner ads" led to a meteoric rise in the NASDAQ. Any 17 year old with a lame-brained idea and a ridiculous company name (or an ability to buy a one word .com) was seemingly awarded a $30+ million round of funding.
Corporate America was pissed and began to think maybe, just maybe, they could get in on a piece of this hearty pie.
Almost simultaneously, Y2K finally became a hot button topic. I'd be remiss not to mention that Y2K was 100% a legit issue. Thankfully, it was accounted for so well by true high-level "nerds in the trenches" that plebs today casually dismiss the whole shebang as a big nothing-burger.
But every good, legitimate scare is coupled almost immediately with a grift. Fly-by-night contract firms played on the "planes falling out of the sky" and "elevators trapping people" angles to absolutely fleece frightened AF legacy entities. "Your coders didn't account for this.. It's their fault! But we have our own true top-notch experts, and we can fix it all!!!" they carnival barked in the faces of mid-to-upper-level managers with suspect (or, worse still, no) coding backgrounds who held the purse strings.
(FYI - old school coders had legit reasons for doing exactly what they did - legacy storage costs and the belief their code would be obsolete decades later)
This allowed these skeevy contracting shysters to roll out a stampede of "coding cowboys" to help line their pockets with this "once in a lifetime" cash-grab. Sadly a lot of these implemented "cowboys" were all hat and no cattle; I personally remember helping a couple of these "contract experts" (neither of which had any useful coding experience) work through legacy COBOL code (which was hilarious and scary, because not only was I studying to be an actuary at the time but I have never actually formally coded in COBOL).
So yea - a large swath of corporate American suits not only felt like they had given too long a leash to their full time coders in hindsight, but they now also felt ripped off and also hoped to cash in on "the internet" all at the same time.
Finally - enter The Agile Manifesto in 2001. In theory, it and its 12 principals were innocent enough and, on the surface, make a whole lot of sense.
But again - what's a good idea without a follow-up grift? Enter Scrum : "An Agile Framework"
Notice the original Agile Manifesto mentioned above is only 68 words long. Even the 12 principals take up barely one page.
And this here Scrum big-boi book, authored by two of the "Agile Manifesto" guys - 176 damn pages .. and not nearly the biggest Scrum book on Amazon. Scrum also morphed into having entire courses, certifications, and retreats based on itself..
Maybe this over-bloated, self-aggrandising "framework" CAN work for some companies but, hell, MLM works for a non-zero percentage of people. Either way, it's sorta starting to have a grifty odor to me at this point
But companies with ever-expanding coding departments absolutely.. ate.. this.. shit.. up! And while they coyly acted like they loved the "efficiency" and "teamwork" Scrum could theoretically add, what most middle-to-upper-level managers ultimately rubbed it out to in the shower was the "accountability" of it all. Standups requiring a team of (oftentimes competitive) coders willing to discuss and "lord over" what one another were doing on the daily while also being monitored by an outsider mole enforcing a sense of false urgency? Boards that can be monitored in real time to review and track everything from a team member making a pull request to taking a shit? Yes please!
Oh, again I know, I know... (Or at least I've been TOLD) all Scrums aren't like this. I personally know several Scrum masters that cringe when I tell them about how the company I work for "Scrums." Still
I've had a pretty high success rate landing+completing a multitude of full stack contract jobs over 20+ years without most of those companies forcing any form of Scrum down my throat. And if I had to retire now I may not do so in as well-to-do a manner as I'd prefer, but I'll be happy greeting your ass at Walmart for walk-around money before I go through this kindergarten-teacher level of oversight bullshit again.
And it's not just me.. or the people I know... Hell, not even all the authors of the original Agile Manifesto are willing to drink the Scrum Kool-Aid.
And this final postscript from this old-head :
Most joint's highest skilled employees (those that can architect large scale solutions) are now swimming in excess meetings which almost always neuter their overall value. Simply "working the board" and "enumerating velocity" often misses the point of high-level productivity. These types of employees get more done when they have time to not only "grind out code" (which obviously "sprint boards" love), but to also step back and evaluate how today's requirements need to evolve over time and architect accordingly. Real-world demands aren't always easy to throw a low fibonacci number at..
One could rightfully argue a lot of a company's best coders intuitively practice Agile in their approach anyway without having to rely on Scrum enforcement. And no, I'm not recommending employees be isolated and allowed to run amuck; that's a recipe for a different type of disaster.
Having your best coders attend well run refinements will almost always be net-positive. But all that "filler" meeting shit? Maybe apply some of that extra time to pair programming with newer or struggling devs (which would allow for a flexibility on scheduling and cadence that Scrum ceremony attendance doesn't).
And if your department has a "high-level" coder that can't level up co-workers with pair programming? Hot take: they are almost assuredly polluting daily Scrum standups they are currently forced to attend to an ever nastier degree. And, oh goodness.. A mid-level manager may have to actually step in and mid-level manage for their dough, instead of being a glorified figurehead or great coder for a company with no further avenues for promotion other than "getting into management"
..but, hey, that's a whole OTHER issue
2025-03-08 01:55:28
