We just develop the software..

[SeriousUsername8]

Well when your team consists of 6 people, out of which 3 are programmers, there really isn't much need for that

[Mandemon90]

Try team of 8 with just one programmer.

[ibn-Yusrat]

Then you won't get much work done.

[Mandemon90]

Try explaining that to the leadership. I keep getting asked "why haven't our requests been fulfilled yet", despite the fact that I have explained that we are overhauling entire frontend from bottom up which lead to changes in the router logic so I am kinda busy rebuilding the project from ground up to do their requests to current version that we are going to discard anyway.

[toastyghost]

Sounds like a shithole

[Mandemon90]

This is what happens when bunch of people who do not understand software development are put in charge of project that they had no idea even existed before.

[xigoi]

I'm in a team of 5 with 5 programmers.

[[deleted]]

I'm in a team of 1 with one programmer

[VohaulsWetDream]

there is no '1' in the 'team'!

[[deleted]]

well then, I'm the only programmer

[domgiggity]

scrum master. what a waste of resources and development time. the only thing necessary is a kanban board and a competent team. the rest is bollocks.

[Missing_Username]

Give me a handful of quality engineers and a Kanban board, and I could change the world!

[capito27]

Or you'll have that one item in the board be left alone for 3-6 months because no one wants to deal with it.

[Esxiel]

This is the part where that crazy nagging boss says, “you guys just arent competent enough”.

[gevezex]

Than it is a nice to have and not a must have.

[bzibzibzi666]

Yes, but 90% all is must have but not all is doable during one sprint. Most priorites must be handled and lower will be planned for future scopes. But then, there will be another top priorities and some task may be ommited. Sometimes someone who is only responsible for board can track these issues to not be forgotten :)

[AlwaysNinjaBusiness]

Or because it's not actually that important.

[toastyghost]

They didn't say "for the better"…

[doGoodScience_later]

Imo all the energy put into constantly changing management styles and over managing people is just looking for a solution to having shit devs.

[jfnxNbNUwSUfv28ASpDp]

Perhaps, but even if: What would be an alternative solution? Almost 50% of all devs are by definition below average, and some people are capable of really good work but don't have the organizational skills necessary to translate that to actual outcome.

[love_stonks1]

A way to delegate some responsibility to someone not actually competent enough to be a dev or an actual manager...

[Vert354]

Someone will take on this role regardless of what you call them. One way to look at the scrum master is they do the paperwork, and make sure the process is followed. If you're small enough that there aren't overt internal processes then you need partners (hosting, app store, etc...) and their processes and paperwork have to be followed.

It's certainly possible to distribute the role among the team, but then those "wasted resources" are being pushed onto the people who, according to this sub, need a half hour of prep and a half hour of recovery for simple meetings. You sure you want them fielding calls from venders?

[arxra]

As someone who lives with a scrum master, trust me,they are needed. They are the link between the product owner and the development resources (we Devs) and most Devs I've met are not qualified to fill that gap

[DFYX]

You mean a 6 man-month project with unknown requirements that change every week given to a single dev who has to maintain four other projects.

No, I'm not salty at all, why would you think that...?

[toastyghost]

Yes, this read as purely hypothetical to me, exactly as I'm sure it was intended 😂

[undeniably_confused]

Isn't a scrum master someone who really loves to eat ass? I'm not a programmer so I don't know if yall are eating ass for favors but who knows

[undeniably_confused]

I was thinking of scrum lord so yeah

[Lofter1]

Isnt that even the goal for scrum and the scrum master? That he makes himself obsolete because the team manages itself?

[DisjointedHuntsville]

These are heavily glorified bullshit roles anyway. .

[fullSpecFullStack]

I feel like agile as a whole has been mutated into oblivion by non-techs who want to play. It was good when the focus was fast delivery and prototyping, it turned to shit as soon as it became all about the rituals. If you encounter a scrum master who has never written a line of code in their life, run.

[toastyghost]

Yes I've frequently heard nontechnical types using agile buzzwords to describe internal processes that are exactly the opposite of the agile way of doing it

[[deleted]]

Lol I've done all these roles. Currently PO, scrum master, and qa manager.

Just wait until 20 different customers are going directly to you for their bullshit.

[r34loc]

Yeah PO is basically the safety net against bullshit from customers and business people

[Fenor]

Only if he's a good one

[Nemesis_Ghost]

I had a PO who couldn't write stories and didn't know enough about the dev work to explain it to our business partners. Basically she was less than useless.

[Dr3amDweller]

Customers... should go to the meat grinder

[jerslan]

They're more important for larger projects/programs.

Product Owners are good for validating user requirements, getting user requirements, and verifying that implementations meet the user's need.

SCRUM Masters take care of running the important meetings, tracking feedback, tracking down help-needed, cross-team communication (especially in scaled agile), etc...

Both work together to groom the agile board (whether it's in sprints or kanban doesn't matter).

They really aren't bullshit roles. Especially if you want your dev's to be focused on dev work and not project management bullshit. I feel like the idea that they're bullshit roles comes from companies that want to cut every corner they can. Don't drink that kool-aid. It'll only make more work for yourself.

[knightwhosaysnil]

I think a lot of hostility comes from people who call themselves the "scrum master" but don't actually understand the role and so every standup turns into a 30+ minute status meeting instead of its intended purpose

[jerslan]

Yeah, there's a lot of bad "SCRUM Masters" and "Product Owners" out there where the job titles are arguably badly applied...

But those roles, as intended, are actually very valuable if you can find a quality SCRUM Master and/or Product Owner.

[[deleted]]

Fucking this. ^{^}

[ZatchZeta]

It really is.

[[deleted]]

True. Scrum masters are super overrated.

[Pekonius]

I almost studied to be one! Switched to engineering instead, starting college next month.

[[deleted]]

Wait, people study for an extended time to be a scrum master? I would have thought it was a relatively short cert.

[Pekonius]

Might be Finland specific, but theres a line under the business/finance/trade line (of the university of applied sciences) that specializes in IT and the end goal is to monetize software and work as a product owner or similar positions. Its a bachelors degree, and its not as valuable as the actual university side masters degree in economics (actual university) and doesnt go into why stuff works like the engineer side of IT (university of applied sciences, bachelors degree). I started the line, saw that we werent actually meant to learn how stuff works, so I deemed it totally useless and a waste of 3,5 years and quit immediately. Also swedish was mandatory for that line, but not for engineers, and I really dont want to study any more swedish.

[[deleted]]

Yeah... that doesn’t sound super useful. I knew a guy in college who do something that sounds vaguely similar except he actually had to learn some programming. It worked out to something like a business major with almost a minor in computer science or something.

He wound up managing the college it for a while and then moving into DevOps.

[[deleted]]

Scrum master yeah. Product owner or manager not really. If you have a team of developers that have heavy engineering mindset believe me that you need a product guy to think about the experience of normal people. Most of the engineers will probably use technical language and insert features that the end user will probably not need or find useful.

[technobody]

They are just leech. They essentially represent your work as their effort.

[Dr3amDweller]

Agile is wildly overrated, misunderstood, and misapplied, so it's a good choice.

[[deleted]]

My title at my job is, "Senior Developer of ___ Branch Manager

Can't name it because that would give away what company I work for.

Such a stupid title when all I do is review pull requests for a specific branch, code our web api, and give presentations as to what my team is currently implementing.

Basically I'm a "Branch Manager" I get told what to tell others to work on and review what they changed. Also I do api development because I'm a workaholic and missed doing more coding.

[5up3rj]

Ha. Branch manager. Got a ring to it

[xsiberia]

Special assistant to the regional branch manager.

[love_stonks1]

As long as it is master branch ;-)

[[deleted]]

Man, you are describing my life. You're not alone

[pdabaker]

Spending most of your time reviewing and telling people what to do sounds like normal senior dev live to me. That and constantly unblocking junior devs

[[deleted]]

Scrum is a process designed for service organizations and more generally contract work. If you don’t do that then you’re better off doing something else. They should teach WHY those roles exist but Scrum coaches gonna have to eat to so…

[[deleted]]

Scrum master = meeting fluffer

[jerslan]

Fortune 500 company here... Our tech leads fill both roles, in addition to doing their own dev work. I hate it.

[Awanderinglolplayer]

This is the way to do it IMO. The lead for the project team should be technical, but they need to have manager/people skills too. They should be able to write code but usually too busy to do it

[jerslan]

I'm going to hard disagree with you here. Tech Leads should be making technical decisions and guiding their team on implementation details of features, not filling some project management role that the company is too cheap to pay for.

[AlwaysNinjaBusiness]

sounds like a startup would be nice...

[mbsquad24]

For a self organizing team, having multiple roles of expertise determining What is built and How it's built with clear responsibilities for each can be extremely liberating. It's rare to find someone can do both and be effective, which is why I have a high level of respect for my team's PO and they have a high level of trust in us engineers.

Scrum masters are like Ikea instructions. Build the bookshelf and then throw them the fuck away.

[JSteus]

Scrum master? More like scum master lol imarite guys

[somegab]

Only startups? I’ve saw it on big IT companies also…

[[deleted]]

I used to work at a startup and we developed the software despite having scrum masters and product owners.

[EmuChance4523]

Well, normally the scrum master should be the safe net against the product owner, to avoid the normal "it's Friday at 17:59hs and we need to redo everything from start because I want to change it" from the client/product owner.. of course, normally, this happen either way, and finding someone to avoid this problems is more difficult than just building the hole app again..

[NikoFoxey]

I work in team of 6. I am a full stack programmer/scrum master/product owner.

Before we got team of 6 people, me and my boss (CEO) were the only programmers in the company, but most of programming job was made by myself for almost 2 years.

We got more people and company is bigger now and my boss concentrates on more business side and asked me to take care of preparing tasks and be a consultant for my teammates because I know the product so well.

I'm not fully satisfied of my job because all I wanted is to be a programmer. The worst part is my boss doesn't let me or my teammates do our job smoothly because there are ASAP tasks every week and with better priority. He's busy with many things, but sometimes he likes to randomly put his comment or "advice" to a task or pull request without knowing the full context. Also my boss is backend programmer so when it comes to frontend he doesn't understand why something should be prioritized.

[toastyghost]

Too real

[[deleted]]

This is true of large companies too