Are agile scrums an outdated idea?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.)
Let’s say you have a team of 12 engineers, and each engineer makes $160,000 a year.
That’s $76.92 an hour.
Taking 12 people offline for a 1 hour meeting means that meeting is costing you $923.08. * 5 days a week = 4,615.38. * 52 weeks a year = $240,000.
You’re burning a quarter of a million every year just having meetings. Also likely, these aren’t the only meetings they’re in.
How much money are you spending preventing work from being done?
We used to have a daily stand up first thing in the morning before anyone had even had coffee for gods sake. “So what’s everyone working on?” Fuck if I know, I haven’t even read my email yet.
If your scrum is an hour long, you arent doing it right. They should be 10-12 minutes tops.
I call those emails.
When I run mine… It’s story 1 - highlights
Story2 - highlights
Etc
In depth conversation can be had after standup… I’m in and out in under 10. Often under 6 minutes… lol
I’ll preface this to say I’ve only done real standup meetings on a project a long time ago, and maybe it wasn’t done the right way (No True Agile), but I didn’t really see the point.
In my opinion a 10 minute meeting with more than 3 people is probably worthless. What information is being exchanged in that time that shouldn’t just be an email? Are people not sure who can help with their issue or not going to bring up things that need more attention if not forced to speak? Does the entire team really need to hear these minute summaries of the small things people accomplished in the last 8 work-hours? And couldn’t this just be done with the team lead talking to each person and coordinating or calling meetings when members need to talk?
So these super short meetings succeed at not wasting a lot of money on process, but IMO it’s because they’re a short waste rather than because they’re an efficient use of time.
@Zaktor
@technology @ajsadauskas @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n the point is you can say if you have problems and quickly find if someone else knows the solution or if you need to spend time digging in.
That kind of meeting would be better as an email.
@Zaktor
@technology @ajsadauskas @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n no, people can say things like that faster than they can type. Unless you are not native
Gathering for a meeting and sitting through everyone’s turns is way longer than typing an email. “I have a problem with X” shouldn’t be a long email, and if the description is a longer conversation you’re burning too much time for the uninvolved people in a large group meeting. In both situations the back and forth discussion should occur directly in a follow-up, not in the group communication medium.
It’s almost never the right choice to prioritize the speaker’s time efficiency over the listeners’. Any speed in speaking vs. typing is completely overshadowed by making 5-10 people listen to them vs. a quick skim of an email and then moving on when it’s not something you know about.
@Zaktor
@technology @ajsadauskas @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n if there is nothing to discuss my meetings take 3 minutes. I can’t verify spelling of just my status email in that time. We don’t leave our desks for the meeting, so it is three minutes. They are called standups for a reason, sitting down should not be worth it (except for the one disabled person )
Your problem seems to be how the meeting is run.
Wouldn’t want to have you on my team thanks
LOL, I very much could not care less random internet person. I’m quite comfortable in my career and you sound obnoxious.
My team runs an async standup on Slack where you just respond to a bot with all the usual stuff. We also do a slightly longer meeting on Tuesday morning where we go into more details, but never more than a half-hour.
This sounds great. “Hey, I’m trying to figure out this bug in this area, anyone have any ideas”. The main benefit of meetings is forced acknowledgement of “messages”, but reading email or other communication mediums should just be part of being a responsible professional.
An hour long scrum? Fucking shoot me. My team is usually about 15 minutes tops. Anything past that and we table it for parking lot.
God, I wish…
You better believe it exists and it ain’t rare either, especially when half of the fucking team is in India and needs their hand held and the only time that can happen is 6am pst in the goddamn morning
I’m afraid that you lose far more than that just going to and from the bathroom, the coffee machine, or down the hall to your office from whichever door you had to walk into. This is not to say that your calculations are wrong, it’s more a question of whether that is a useful metric.