10 years ago, I was a contractor for a small startup using SCRUM. We had literally 4 hours of meetings per/day. Every other week, we had an additional 1 hour planning meeting. I also had to laugh when she decided to add 'water cooler' meetings. We were developers from all over the globe forced to have awkward conversations.<p>It was strange as a developer to be paid to be in meetings more than actually coding. Especially in a company with 10 employees.<p>Eventually, the owner started having fits because we weren't getting anything done on time and she eventually let me go. At this point, I had already started a new business and was almost making enough to cover my basic expenses.<p>In the call when she let me go, she told me that she could hire 3 people in India to do my job, so that's what she was doing.
I think SCRUM has lost its roots.<p>---<p>To quote men far better than I:<p><a href="https://agilemanifesto.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://agilemanifesto.org/</a><p>Manifesto for Agile Software Development<p>We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.<p>Through this work we have come to value:<p>Individuals and interactions over processes and tools<p>Working software over comprehensive documentation<p>Customer collaboration over contract negotiation<p>Responding to change over following a plan<p>That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.<p>---<p>If your process delivers on the above. It is agile. If not. It isn't.<p>And personally: I prefer agile as stated above, but I have yet to find a SCRUM team I'd work on.
I think Scrum might be defensible when used for rare, genuine emergency situations. If a make-or-break the company project with a tight deadline comes along, you might want to change it up with something like Scrum for a short time period to manage that as a reasonable, defensible choice.<p>But I think it's devastating to developer happiness and overall productivity if you're just running as a Scrum forever and have people with literal job-titles like "Scrum Master" who (IMO) feel pressured to create as much process as possible to justify their position. The ceremonies and process are going to grate on developers long-term. IMO, the managers will have a bad long-term sense of the effort and difficulties and progress of each sprint if you're perpetually doing that.