A lot of companies do what they call "Scrum" or "Agile" which is actually a thing that should be called "Jira". Sadly, the Jira methodology is catalytic to any incipient fearfulness it finds in its host. It turns wobbly teams into paralyzed and unhappy teams almost without fail.
It makes me sad.
. . . a couple of addiitonal points, not targeted cuz I'm not really looking for a fight today . . .
Us-Theming managers doesn't help. Most managers have had exactly as much training, mentoring, support, and love as most folks down on the shop floor, which is to say, very damned little.
Jira is a tool used for a therapeutic purpose, not unlike medical therapies. Medicine is *full* of treatments that are useful for some and highly dangerous for others, based on their current state. The Jira methodology devours teams that are already fearful. That was my point.
The widespread adoption of the Jira methodology is a wonderful example of what I call the idols of the schema. Makes perfect sense in the abstract, works very poorly in lived experience.
geepawhill.org/2017/09/18/ido…
geepawhill.org/2017/09/18/ido…
I am not complaining about a particular company. I do not work for/with one company, but with a great many of them. I am not coming from a place of inexperience with the methodology, but with considerably more experience than most.
Some issues: 1) a model of individual responsibility that is inaccurate for successful geekery. 2) numbers that cost a lot to gather and don't outperform placebos. 3) Implicit legalism caused by structuring collaboration as async contracting. 4) story points. 5) Forced adoption.
Directed parallelism -- hierarchical gather-scatter command-and-control led by a central intelligence -- works well at scales that are *dwarfed* by the size, complexity, and sophistication of modern software applications.
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