Timeline for How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 12, 2023 at 16:40 | comment | added | Toby Speight | Interesting story here, but nothing that answers the question about how to prevent those things happening (hint: they are not inevitable, but they are common pitfalls). | |
| Jun 30, 2020 at 14:28 | comment | added | Eric King | @paul23 I admit my original off-the-cuff reply didn't really get my point across effectively, but I wasn't really trying very hard to. Let me make it explicit: A "decent developer" by definition doesn't turn into a shitty, uncaring developer because of the development process they're working in. And they don't need their development process to reward caring about the code in order to care about the code. A "decent developer" will care about the code and will go above and beyond despite obstacles in their way. If not, In my opinion, they're not a decent developer. | |
| Jun 30, 2020 at 9:25 | comment | added | paul23 | @EricKing the problem is that scrum doesn't really reward "going beyond" and "caring about the code". It describes you should but doesn't really make it positive to care, rather I've learned to "not care". Because it needs to be done by yesterday already and hence will probably be overwritten later anyways. | |
| Jun 30, 2020 at 9:22 | comment | added | paul23 | @meriton "Because once your software goes live people are going to notice the bugs / lack of features" - So you make software that works (mostly). Scrum leaves very little value to make software that opens up future endeavours. It doesn't reward me for writing more robust code that not only works, but is proven to work best. A good developer should know when the decision by the company isn't the actual best for a company, and hence more work is better. Scrum doesn't allow for this. | |
| Jun 12, 2020 at 13:07 | comment | added | Christian Hackl | @EricKing: So, what would you do if you were this person's boss and knew about the problem? Fire him? | |
| Jun 11, 2020 at 22:28 | comment | added | Eric King | @ChristianHackl No, I mean it in the sense of "acceptable, satisfactory, reasonable". Any developer "transformed to mediocrity by Scrum mostly because Scrum gives me a path to get away with it and gives me no reason to care and strongly encourages me to game the system" is a poor developer in my opinion; in the sense of the word that describes the ability to adequately perform their role as a developer. This seems perfectly evident to me... not sure why the pushback. | |
| Jun 10, 2020 at 4:53 | comment | added | Christian Hackl | @EricKing: Perhaps you mean "decent" in the sense of "good or kind". I mean "decent" in the sense of "acceptable, satisfactory, or reasonable" (dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/decent). If so, then this discussion is moot, because SE obviously isn't the place to discuss what is socially acceptable. However, I believe the second definition makes more sense in the context of the answer's first sentence. And yes, of course an excellent developer can (and mostly will) underperform at his or her job if the workplace rewards mediocrity, as seems to be case here. | |
| Jun 9, 2020 at 14:22 | comment | added | Eric King | @ChristianHackl I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm not saying anything about idealistic workaholism. I believe that there's more to being a decent developer than just being skilled in writing code. Being able to communicate well is also very important, as is caring about the code you write and the environment in which it lives. By my estimation, a decent programmer by definition wouldn't allow themselves to become mediocre and uncaring just because they're working within a framework like Scrum. That's what I mean. | |
| Jun 9, 2020 at 5:59 | comment | added | Christian Hackl | @EricKing: Work is not, and should not be, an end in itself for most people. You do it because it allows you to sustain a certain standard of living. That says nothing about how skilled a developer you are, much less about how skilled you have been in the past. I've seen my share of idealistic workaholics who produce crap code. I guess that Scrum has transformed many people in the same way as the person who wrote this answer, but most are not as honest about it. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 21:10 | history | edited | Spleen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 565 characters in body
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| Jun 8, 2020 at 17:25 | comment | added | Eric King | @ChristianHackl "... Scrum gives me a path to get away with it and gives me no reason to care and strongly encourages me to game the system." Because a decent developer wouldn't follow that path. | |
| Jun 8, 2020 at 9:57 | comment | added | Christian Hackl | @EricKing: Why? There is a difference between a developer's skills and his or her work ethic. What I see here is a clever, self-reflective person who has optimised his or her very personal return on investement. Big gains for little effort. In fact, such efficiency lends even more credence to the initial self-assessment. Such people tend to understand both social and technical systems very quickly and are generally more successful in life as a result of it, regardless of whether we'd enjoy working with them or not. Scrum is obviously the wrong way for a company to make use of their skills. | |
| S May 31, 2020 at 13:09 | history | suggested | Peter Mortensen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Copy edited (e.g. ref. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/master%27s_degree#Noun>).
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| May 30, 2020 at 6:14 | comment | added | Alien_AV | Saying "it's not real scrum" in no way helps solve their problem. Also, "true" Scrum is still suspect here - so many people apply it incorrectly. It's definitely not "easy to use, hard to misuse" type of methodology. | |
| May 30, 2020 at 6:03 | comment | added | Alien_AV | @MarkRotteveel It's getting repetitive. Most of the comments here say "you're not doing scrum". I don't think it's relevant what the name is. The question and the answer seem to describe the same practices. Maybe the idealistic definition of scrum doesn't match their experience. But they still both experience the same problem, and the people around them still call it "Scrum". | |
| May 24, 2020 at 4:32 | comment | added | Jasen | yes his skill level is unknown, but his decency is suspect. | |
| May 23, 2020 at 14:13 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 31, 2020 at 13:09 | |||||
| May 22, 2020 at 22:33 | comment | added | nick012000 | @Steve I think that is what Sprint Retrospectives are for: to tell your boss that you think their presence during Daily Scrums is doing more harm than good. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 21:00 | comment | added | Steve | @MarkRotteveel, the problem is that typically managers claim to be part of the team, secondly their loyalties usually rest with their own superiors rather than their claimed team, and thirdly many see their role as being to apply the heat to their team (or at least relay and amplify the heat they themselves feel). To say "just uninvite your boss" demonstrates by its terseness an almost surreal ignorance of power relations and culture in the typical workplace. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 20:07 | history | migrated | from workplace.stackexchange.com (revisions) | ||
| May 22, 2020 at 19:57 | comment | added | DJClayworth | Even from this short description it is obvious that scrum was being done very badly here. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 18:20 | comment | added | meriton | "Scrum emphasizes reporting about speed nothing else so committing garbage and then using the time for myself makes absolute sense". Seems rather short-sighted, because once your software goes live people are going to notice the bugs / lack of features. Management won't like this, and scrum or not, will look for answers. If they find out that you guys have been cheating your company, getting fired might be the least of your concerns. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 15:58 | comment | added | Mark Rotteveel | "Scrum makes the 15 minute standup where you influence your boss and where your boss evaluates your performance." then you're not doing scrum. The standup is for the team to get each other up-to-date, and check if there are impediments to getting things done, so those impediments can be removed. It is about maybe linking up with on of your team members to work on something. It is absolutely not about influencing your boss. If that is how you work, you should uninvite your boss to the daily standup. | |
| May 22, 2020 at 15:21 | history | answered | Spleen | CC BY-SA 4.0 |