Thread by @TotherAlistair

@Rubberduck203 @agileschools @JonAlb @DPradko @paul_boos @ClayDowling @Attila226 I'll write a long thread w my knowledge of the background and the history, will I hope clarify a lot ... hoping it will reduce the general hostility around the topic - I expect you will see some surprises in there :)

can't now, but later

@Rubberduck203 @agileschools @JonAlb @DPradko @paul_boos @ClayDowling @Attila226 so here goes (taking a minute to warm up his fingers...) (and take off all the respondent names...

Possibly the most important thing to think about when looking at Scrum, XP and "Agile" now is that, as they started, they were very anti-management.

so when you say, Scrum/XP/Agile helps "management" oppress the workers, recognize that is how bad management coopted the ideas
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side note 1/ i'm writing this stream of consciousness, so no back-editing (hah.sigh.lol)

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side note 2/ I'm noted for saying,

"Your ideas will either be misquoted and misused, or ignored. And you don't get to choose."

Power seeks tools to retain power.

That agile got misquoted and misused only means it was successful, otherwise you wouldn't hear of it.

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Ken Schwaber wasn't shy that his goal was to get rid of project managers (Jeff S. I don't know about). He wanted to throw them out the window, as a profession, basically.

So Scrum was not invented to help management or PMs.

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XP same way. the original XP replaced the PM with a junior-level "Tracker" person, who went around every day and asked ppl how far done they were, that being the perception of what PMs did with their time.

Scrummasters were given zero power and zero votes on all issues.

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The job of a SM was to run around the org getting things signed, keeping people away from the team, whatever needed so the ppl could "get work done".

Hopefully that establishes that any interpretations about Scrum helping mgmt press down are pointed in the wrong direction

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Scrum struck a magnificent bargain in hostile territory:

Mgmt got 12 times/yr (1ce /mo) to change direction in any way they wanted;

Team got 1 mo of total quiet time w no interruptions or changes of direction to do heavy thinking/working.

No execs ever got a better deal.

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so where does "commitment" come in:

Team got to announce what they could and couldn't do in a month, no management interference in their bid.

No dev team ever got a better deal.

only caveat was ...

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only caveat was:

If you promise you can deliver this much by end of month, then do that. Honor your commitment.

you F up on your bid, you work overtime. Learn from it for next month. You F up every month, ur a dummy. Learn already.

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since mgmnt was not allowed to interfere w the bids, it's only up to the team to decide and declare. If the team consistently overbids, that's on them.

Here's where it starts to get interesting ...

a) teams consistently overbid, even without mgmt pressure. They just do.

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Kent Beck and Martin Fowler wrote down (don't know who started it) a brilliant strategy:

Yesterday's Weather - you can only bid what you completely last month/sprint/iteration.

Now you can't overbid repeatedly.

yeah you should do this

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side note 3/ as a methodologist, I have a rule that all methodologists overdecorate their methodologies with untested things
me incl

I don't think they tested this commitment thing properly, to know that it works, imho it was a wishful thinking social program.

#decoration
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In XP 2nd ed, 2004, Kent Beck went down the same path, saying estimates should be in hours, not story points.

He explicitly said programmers should learn their profession and take responsibility for their bids.

i.e, grow up

That also didn't work 🤣

but was same thinking

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So when was "sprint commitment" taken out?

I started w Scrum in 2008, took a class from Ken himself
He had at that time a ritua: if a sprint was going to be a failure and had to be aborted, everyone should lie down & have a screaming temper-tantrum on the ground.

Really

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But I asked him, based on my worries about the negative effects of sprint "failure", whether it was actually a good idea.

His answer shocked me:

"What would it mean to the team was told their work was a failure? How depressing would that be?"

so he knew, or sensed

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I never taught sprint commitment, I'll tell you why in a mo...

It was a few revisions after that that "sprint commitment" vanished from the guide and was replaced by ever-softer tones of "do what you do, and learn during the reflection."

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So if anyone brings it up, tell them they are 10 years out of date and need to catch up.

now for why I never taught it...

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I do project interviews. Some teams tell me they like to overbid the sprint, some that they like to underbid.

note that they *like* it, not that management pressured them. Please.

The ones who like overbidding said "We never want to have to ask, "What should we do next?""

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the ones who like underbidding say, "We don't like to fail. If we get done, we can always pull whatever's next."

To me, this is where the action is.

mmm, cuz i can't back edit, I'll put those 2 sentences together:

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The ones who like underbidding say, "We don't like to fail. If we get done, we can always pull whatever's next."

The ones who like overbidding say "We never want to have to ask, "What should we do next?""
They don't care about "failure"

who prefers which on your team?

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Notice all of this is all team-internal.

Good mgmt tries to engage the team in this dialog, get them to take ownership, get them to learn, participate.

Bad management uses it as a tool to beat people.
But that they'll do no matter what tools you give them.

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Remember, Scrum was invented to function in hostile environments, it's a really interesting contract between hard-pushing execs and devs needing time to think.

hmmm, let's see what I left out....

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lol who says you can't back-edit in Twitter hahahaha

🤣

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