Are agile scrums an outdated idea?
Here’s a video on YouTube making the case for why agile was an innovative methodology when it was first introduced 20 years ago.
However, he argues these days, daily scrums are a waste of time, and many organisations would be better off automating their reporting processes, giving teams more autonomy, and letting people get on with their work:
https://youtu.be/KJ5u_Kui1sU?si=M_VLET7v0wCP4gHq
A few of my thoughts.
First, it’s worth noting that many organisations that claim to be “agile” aren’t, and many that claim to use agile processes don’t.
Just as a refresher, here’s the key values and principles from the agile manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
* Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
* Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
* Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
* Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
* Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
* The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
* Working software is the primary measure of progress.
* Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
* Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
* Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
* The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
* At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Your workplace isn’t agile if your team is micromanaged from above; if you have a kanban board filled with planning, documentation, and reporting tasks; if your organisation is driven by processes and procedures; if you don’t have autonomous cross-functional teams.
Yet in many “agile” organisations, I’ve noticed that the basic principles of agile are ignored, and what you have is micromanagement through scrums and kanban boards.
And especially outside software development teams, agile tends to just be a hollow buzzword. (I once met a manager at a conference who talked up how agile his business was, and didn’t believe me when I said agile was originally a software development methodology — one he revealed he wasn’t following the principles of.)
Or if someone else is working in the same area of code as you. Typically not much of an issue on an individual team but it can happen across teams. We’ve gotten better about dividing things up but there are still times when working on an issue leads you to an area of the code base that isn’t obvious from the outset.
Avoiding merge conflicts altogether is the easier route when possible.
The issue is this only has value if your scrum is large enough people might be accidentally conflicting with someone they wouldn’t just be coordinating with normally. And the larger the team the worst the cost of a standup meeting and the less value is provided. A multi team scrum sounds horrible.
We have various scrum teams in our department and the scrum masters communicate with each other. The teams don’t interact with each other that much.
So it’s not the scrum that’s handling the issues it’s the leaders. They could just as easily walk around to everyone and ask if they have any issue. Like most meetings, the scrum is efficient for the manager, not for the devs.
No, and that would be very inefficient. If I have an issue during the day I just ask in our group chat and see who’s got an answer.
If there is a story about x and I end up making changes in y there’s a good chance I’m bringing that up in scrum. If the scrum master becomes aware of another team working on y they’ll tell us to talk to each other about it to make sure we aren’t stepping on each others toes.
Scrums are useful to make sure things are running smooth and keep your team on the same page. If you keep saying you’re gonna do x that day and after a few days you still haven’t done it, it sounds like there are impediments not being brought up. Also a great time to remind people about any outstanding PRs. When all is going well, scrum can seem useless. I’m reporting I did the things I was going to do and telling you what I’m doing next. Not super useful. But you never know when something unexpected is going to come up.
Scrums don’t have to be real-time either. We’ve done them over chat before. Sometimes people email it when they are out sick. No idea why cause if I’m out sick then you’re just not getting my report. If any of it is important I’ll bring it up at the next scrum.
And, I suppose a manager could be a scrum master but none of ours are. Sounds like a waste of time for them.