Comments on: Scrum Is Dead. Long Live Scrum. [Part 1]

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 09:33:08 +0000

Lance, I can understand your frustration. Bad project management comes in many forms, including Agile. Some key questions would be: “Team, how are we doing with the lightweight task tracking? Are we delivering all of our committed features in the iteration? If so, then we don’t have too much of problem. However, if we have difficulty delivering, then we need to ask why that is”. Since the answer is almost always related to communication, the next question would be “team, how do we improve communication and coordination? I have some process suggestions, which one should we experiment with first? Oh, and BTW, we are not going to do the same thing as before, because you agreed that did not work”. Just because we want to encourage self-organization, does not mean the team is permitted to be undisciplined. You have to coach them in the direction of the right level of tracking the right things.

Feel free to contact me offline to chat in more detail: email (at) jessefewell.com

By: Lance Lyons

Lance Lyons — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:23:46 +0000

Thanks for your response Jesse,

I have a group that wants to move more toward agile/scrum. The workflow they want to use is Open, In Progress, Resolved, Closed. The thought is it takes to much to define the “in progress” into other steps like (in development, in peer review, in test, etc) because these are waterfall approaches and the update of the item as it works its way through is to much churn. With this thought, we dont know of any of the details about where the item is during the in progress step. Is there a hold up in development, is there a problem in QA. So instead of using the issue tracking tools and having these process steps, they want to move toward this simpler approach. I am in favor of simplification but at this point its almost like all we need is a sticky note on a white board that shows the item name, who is assigned, how much work is required is all that all we need to do is move it from Open, In Progress, Resolved. You dont even need an issue tracking tool for this. For many groups Agile and Scrum mean less process and more ad hoc approaches. This is why the Agile Scrum scenario is slowly dying. Agile/scrum is not being used effectively and properly.

Sorry for my ranting.

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:07:58 +0000

Lance, It turns out that Scrum has become very viable. Forrester last year found that 35% of all IT projects are using formal Agile techniques, and nearly all of those are using Scrum in some fashion. Individuals and interactions are the actual biological units of any organization. Processes and tools are merely there to *support* those interactions. I strongly agree that nobody can do business in the real world without processes (e.g. payroll) and tools (e.g. email). However, when those processes and tools become the ends, rather than the means, the project manager has failed. If you’ve worked on projects that are using only ad hoc processes, that’s not Agile. If your teams have abandoned proper process stages in favor those than can not trace or report on actual progress, that’s not Agile, and certainly not the empirical process control that Scrum espouses. I think that’s what this post is about: the debate is not between Scrum or XP, but rather between bad Agile and proper Agile.

Thanks for your perspective,
-jesse

By: Lance Lyons

Lance Lyons — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:14:49 +0000

Hi Jesse, I think there is some value in scrum or iterative / agile processes. Many of the problems with scrum and agile come from the manifesto’s description. Example, People and Interactions over processes and tools. What this has meant for many companies is move away from processes and tools to a more agile (ad hoc) process or lack of process. Somehow no process gives groups the ability to produce more? Workflows that show process steps are abandoned to show more simplified states like new item-> In Progress -> done.. with no real tracking and reporting on what is happening in the In Progress areas. Teams are allowed to collaborate and decide because they are empowered. Are they empowered to skip code reviews, perhaps skip the testing on this item and agree between developer and qa person that all is good or just whatever they do is correct?

There are benefits to agile approaches like small units of work which leads to quick feedback on whether you are making progress. However, what happens if you are not making progress… how do you know where you are? Do you need another scrum meeting? Does the scrum master have to walk around asking for progress updates because the tools arent used that tracked progress through workflows?

Scrum has some issues that need to be addressed before it becomes viable which should include processes and tools to help. It may help companies that had nothing before in terms of processes. However to many companies with good sdlc processes think they can achieve more with scrum and they fail. You cant always rely on the people and interactions over well defined processes and tools.

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:58:26 +0000

Cory, I like where this conversation is going; it’s helping me get a better sense of the agile industry’s issues. Specifically, your latest post crafts a very good description of the execution problems of the Scrum Alliance. However, I don’t think that means the mission is fragmented. See my response post here: http://www.jessefewell.com/2010/02/26/scrum-is-dead-long-live-scrum-part-2/

By: Scrum Is Dead. Long Live Scrum. [Part 2]

Scrum Is Dead. Long Live Scrum. [Part 2] — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:51:58 +0000

[...] the last week or so, Cory Foy and I have been trading posts about the state of the Scrum universe. In his last entry, he writes with a vim and vinegar, and [...]

By: Jesse Fewell

Jesse Fewell — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:38:13 +0000

Thushara, your chat about tailoring Scrum served as no small inspiration for this post. Too many people out there are literally afraid to color outside the lines, but not you. I continue to be impressed at what you and Exilesoft have done tailoring Scrum for offshore projects. I only wish there was more dialog about Agile project tailoring, rather than chatter about “that’s not Scrum”.

By: Thushara Wijewardena

Thushara Wijewardena — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 02:09:57 +0000

Jesse, This is really a nice post and thank you for the insights you brought in here. I do not complain over Scrum as a framework after practicing Scrum in Offshore project management for 5 -6 years now. But in this context, which is offshore project development I always had to have my own version of scrum, because Scrum as it is failed. As you quoted, I see many versions of Scrum coming out in the industry, but as much as we criticized Scrum we use it as a baseline for the methods we practice.
Right now with all these offshore and scrum and some other Agile experience I have , Im in the process of creating a Offshore Project Management framework based on Scrum which is really interesting..

By: Cory Foy

Cory Foy — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:19:22 +0000

Hi Jesse,

Thanks. It’s not an either/or kind of thing.

Unfortunately, my comment here turned into a full on blog post (http://blog.coryfoy.com/2010/02/but-if-the-scrum-alliance-cant-do-it-who-will/). The heart of the matter is that we aren’t doing it well here in the software industry, so why should we think we can also take on spreading that to other industries in the current structure?

Cory

By: ..but if the Scrum Alliance Can’t Do It, Who Will? - Cory Foy, LLC - Agile Training and Consulting - Enterprise Agility Redefined

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 01:18:10 +0000

[...] Fewell has written a blog post called Scrum Is Dead. Long Live Scrum. His viewpoint is that the old Scrum is dead, and that it is morphing into something new. In the [...]