Comments on: Agile is Not Scrum, Part 2

By: Derek Neighbors

Derek Neighbors — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:59:54 +0000

@David I agree.

The fact that customer doesn’t respect for a process, isn’t going to make a different process better. Any process will fail if there is no respect for it.

By: John Sonmez

John Sonmez — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:40:30 +0000

Thank you for posting this. This completely echo’s the problems that I have seen adopting Scrum. You are completely right about the not trying to force the customer to commit to two weeks without changing their mind. They just won’t do it. Even if you explain all the benefits and come in there and set it all up, it will be like trying to paddle upstream against the way they are used to running their business.
I am really starting to learn towards Kanban for situations like this rather than trying to force Scrum. I really think that too many people are fighting this battle instead of doing what works. Now don’t get me wrong, there are obvious problems if you business can’t make up its mind for just two weeks at a time, but unless the organization as a whole from top down is ready to make a total change, bringing in Scrum will just point out a problem that no one is willing to fix.
9 out of 10 times when I hear about a situation you are describing here, the customer could benefit from much smaller measures. Often you can get a much large bang for you buck by implementing a continuous integration, helping them get rid of their “unit tests”, that touch the database and every component in the system, replacing them with real unit tests, and help them see why XXXXHelper class is a bad idea.

By: David Starr

David Starr — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:03:58 +0000

@Jak

I get it, dude. I really do. The point is, no amount of “do this” changes culture. What Lean provides us is the ability to actually understand how we are spending money today and make deliberate decisions to improve.

I do not think prescribing ANY methodology will fix the world. The truth is NOTHING works. No process will change behavior. Only people can do that, not a process.

By: Andy Roberts

Andy Roberts — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:51:37 +0000

@Jak: There may be one crucial difference between a lean/kanban approach and Scrum, and that is that the set of software deveopment ideas known as ‘Kanban’ is less a methodology, more a lens or a view on your adopted process. I’d say (in my limited experience, I work for one company, I’m not a coach or a consultant) that adopting kanban as a tool (in the messy situation described above) and approaching things with a lean mindset, is more likely to surface issues (such as dysfunction elsewhere in the company) and lead to them being addressed than scrum is. It certainly worked for us in a context that was uncomfortably close to the one described above. And we’re getting recognition for it in the company at large.

By: Andy Roberts

Andy Roberts — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:16:50 +0000

Everything here rings true for me. See http://www.onesandthrees.com/2009/05/kanban-for-a-small-team/

By: Jak

Jak — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:11:45 +0000

I’m not sure you or he is getting it really.

Sure Scrum won’t help him, but nor will Lean. They are both just ways of creating a process, but if he and his department are that disfunctional, a development methodology won’t fix it, they need a new approach to business and possibly new definitions of job roles and responsibilities.

This sounds like exactly the same blog posts when people went from XP to Scrum, the old methodology didn’t fix your disfunctional department, I’ve got a new one to try.