I used to be a diehard scrum advocate (though I've always been focused on results and not just process as magic). I've felt in my latest role, scrum doesn't cut it.<p>Problems:
- Larger team: I can't swarm developers on a single project. It's impractical for every team member to be instantly able to help out with the domain specific work.
- We're a platform team and so are in the way of $FEATURE a lot. Our long term roadmap is primarily driven by other teams urgency and we have to roll with it.
- Estimates are a boolean, not a date. Our estimates don't matter because unless it's a 6m+ project, it needs to be done because of $FEATURE<p>Because of this, sprint planning is never stable long term. Every work comes with tradeoffs being made at the top level. Estimation means time away from doing work we know we're going to do unless it's a huge SWAG.<p>I like the ownership scrum has, but the work is gonna take what the work takes. Why should we spend tons of time estimating and planning when we just need to get the work done before next product launch 6m out? Feels like Kanban might work better. I need to read up on the Basecamp model.
Scrum was invented to manage a team of
dysfunctional COBOL programmers at a bank. That says it all about it.<p>It's mostly for less skilled and unmotivated workers working on a relatively simple projects (e.g. corporate/enterprise software development).<p>Leaving aside stupid rituals and ceremonies, which are time-wasters, and motivation-killers. Scrum aims to address the task management aspect by approaching it as a tickets bin packing problem. However, it relies on the false assumption that accurate task estimation is possible.<p>For reactive or unplanned work, short sprints can be effectively replaced by a pure Kanban approach.<p>For proactive or planned work, long sprints can be better substituted with mini-waterfall SDLCs.<p>While the post mentions the Shape Up method and highlights that FAANG companies do not use Scrum, it fails to mention that these companies utilize mini-waterfall SDLCs with approximately six-week cycles.