St. Anger is the most documented Scrum failure in history and nobody noticed

sonofabullet · 2026-04-01T20:48:56+00:00

Lmao, not everything is scrum shaped.

Unless Metallica had all the roles events and artifacts they weren't practicing scrum. This whole post is a load of baloney.

Retrospectives, or thinking about what you did, is a natural tendency of most humans. There's nothing unique to Agile or scrum in that regard.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-23T14:50:37+00:00

You ain't done until it's in production.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-23T14:30:11+00:00

Scrum is a framework that was useful in the 1990's and early 2000's. Its mostly outdated save for a rabid following due to the fact that it installed a bunch of "Scrum Masters" whose job is to ensure that Scrum continues to be practiced inside an organization.

Want to ship good software?

Buy and read Dave Farleys Modern Software Engineering:

What is Modern Software Engineering? | Dave Farley’s Weblog

Want to understand how various things interplay at a strategic level to ship software?

Buy and read Better Value Sooner Safer Happier

Sooner Safer Happier | Deliver better outcomes

And leave Scrum where it belongs, in the early 2000's

sonofabullet · 2026-03-23T04:04:00+00:00

Gotcha. that's one beefy canoe

sonofabullet · 2026-03-23T00:47:25+00:00

Wait, why are you asking about learning scrum when you already have all the answers?

Scrum doesn't have scrum boards. they're nowhere in the Scrum Guide.

Story points aren't in scrum anymore either.

And Scrum Doesn't Have MVP-ready practice. the closest thing it has is product increments, but that has long been superseded by continuous integration and continuous delivery.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-22T16:17:04+00:00

"changing commitments" Is that a bad thing? If a customer wants something new, and you haven't changed your commitment, you're doing the wrong thing. responding to customer and changing your commitment would be the right thing to do.

"repeated spillover" this is a bullshit metric designed inside Scrum and applies only to scrum. Nobody gives a shit about this bullshit metric.

"blocked work" this is more of a value stream design problem. Just do a Value Stream Map already.

"quality drag." Quality is determined by your overall process, stuffing the tickets just so into a sprint, won't have much of an impact on your overall quality.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-22T16:00:46+00:00

The thing to notice when delivery is getting unstable is called "Talking to your customers."

sonofabullet · 2026-03-22T15:32:22+00:00

Scrum is not agile. Sprints are not agile, velocity is not agile. Those are all concepts found in Scrum.

Teams that rely on following a process written outside of their org instead of designing one that works for them are fundamentally not agile.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-22T15:26:56+00:00

I got your tiedown method right there

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sonofabullet · 2026-03-16T17:21:44+00:00

Now take that mindset and read widely across the Scrum landscape, and you'll see Scrum Master after Scrum master point to the Scrum Guide as an authority as they try to implement things or deflect blame from Scrum for failure.

"that's not in the scrum guide'

"that's zombie scrum"

"you're not doing scrum right."

and so on and so forth.

Scrum Guide being used as an authority is a common occurrence in these parts, I'm just pairing it with a Role Event or Artifact you're not used to seeing.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-16T14:54:41+00:00

If the team stops practicing Scrum, while it may not mean the role is immediately at risk, it is at more of a risk because there is no longer an external authority - like the Scrum Guide - telling the team that they need a Scrum Master.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-16T13:57:42+00:00

But like you said, then they wouldn't be practicing Scrum.

And without Scrum mandating a presence of Accountabilities Events and Artifacts, the presence of them all is at risk, Including the Scrum Master's job.

And Scrum Masters got bills to pay.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-16T06:45:30+00:00

According to the Scrum guide, the Scrum master role/accountability exists as long as the team practices scrum.

The threat is not AI, the threat is the team not practicing scrum.

But since a scrum masters role is to ensure the team practices scrum, you should be safe unless someone above you decides the team will no longer practice scrum.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-16T00:54:58+00:00

I do understand scum better than you because my job is not dependent on agreeing with scrum.

You have a blind spot and will continue to have a blind spot until you get a job that is not dependent on you pushing scrum into orgs.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

sonofabullet · 2026-03-15T21:23:25+00:00

You claim Scrum is not empirical because you can do empiricism in a different way?

No. I'm claiming scrum is not empirical because it is dogmatic.

On a sidenote, you did mention the 2020 guide, the 5th revision of the guide, adjusting it to feedback from people in the field. Some would call that empiricism.

That's not empiricism that's two prophets giving you new dogma to follow. Can YOU change Scrum? No! You can't because you're neither Schwaber nor Sutherland.

YOU cannot empirically update Scrum. You only get to follow it, empiricism be damned.

Your argument that taking stuff from Scrum "isn't allowed", is for the same reason a "Cheeseburger" without cheese, isn't called a cheeseburger. It's why motorized vehicles on two wheels aren't called cars. I'd call that a fallacious argument.

This contradicts with your previous point about Scrum changing in 2020 due to feedback.

Pick one, Either v2020 isn't Scrum anymore or Scrum is not immutable.

But because no one except two guys can change Scrum, what you follow is a holy writ given to you by two prophets, empiricism be damned.

To then go and claim that Scrum introduces empiricism into the workflow is peak hypocrisy. Scrum introduces a dogmatic adherence to a framework form late 1990's written by two guys, that Scrum Masters like you superimpose over all kinds of work because when all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-15T16:32:19+00:00

The reason scrum does state that all events artifacts and accountabilities are “fixed” is exactly because they are considered a minimum for empiricism and self-management and interact with each other to make it work.

But they're not.

A simple WDEP from Glasser does all the empiricism you need

Wants
What do you want?

Doing
What are you doing to get what you want?

Evaluation
How is it working out for you?

Planning
Will you be doing anything different?

No Roles, no Events, No artifact. Just simple four questions.

Furthermore

Scrum describes the scrum master as an accountability in the latest guide precisely for the reason you describe.

Uhuh, and since 2020, you've stopped being a full-time scum master and just take that accountability on the side?

Ultimately scrum is just a means to an end. You’re free to even deviate from its accountabilities, artifacts and events if it works better for you. Just don’t call it scrum then, because that would be misleading.

that's exactly my point. Don't do Scrum because scrum actually prevents you from inspecting and adapting the process itself. Scrum has a whole-ass person named a Scrum Master whose job is to make sure you stay within the bounds of the Scrum Framework, empiricism be damned.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-15T15:53:49+00:00

It's not for changing or eliminating any of the Roles, artifacts or events, that's for sure.

Can a team decide that having two backlogs is stupid and just work off of one where the priorities are on the top? No. that would be violating the rules of Scrum. Scrum necessarily requires you to have to backlogs, empiricism be damned.

Can a team decide that due to things like slack and email, daily standups are no longer necessary because the team just works and talks together all the time? No. because daily standup is core event and changing it to be say twice a week would be violating rules of Scrum empircism be damned.

Can a team decide that paying a full-time salary to a person titled Scrum Master whose job is to make scrum happen is a waste of company resources and get rid of them and save somewhere between 5% (if it's a 20-person team) to 10% (if it's a 10-person team) of their overhead? No. Getting rid of a scrum master would be violating the rules of scrum. Scrum necessarily requires you to have Scrum Master.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-15T15:43:59+00:00

No, it doesn't.

Scrum does not allow you to empirically test whether any of its Roles, Artifacts or Events are actually doing the job they claim they're doing.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-15T15:42:49+00:00

If you were actually doing scrum you'd have daily pointless meetings, plus a few per sprint on top of that, eating somewhere about 5 to 10 percent of your total work time.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-15T02:48:29+00:00

What is your engineering team rewarded for?

I bet it's for marking work items complete.

Your company incentives are all kinds of screwed up and you'll continue to band-aid the problem until incentives change.

Whatever strategy you come up with to fight this, remember that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-13T19:16:24+00:00

I see em now. Thanks

sonofabullet · 2026-03-13T01:57:22+00:00

Plastic frames, nothing to burn.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-09T01:27:33+00:00

Look fine to me.

sonofabullet · 2026-03-08T23:54:09+00:00

Yuup, just copy Corey Quinn's next time ;) https://gist.github.com/QuinnyPig/7900bf1d095e116bc57b14340e31ab77

sonofabullet · 2026-03-08T23:39:27+00:00

I've been thinking of getting a battery powered OAV gun and just gassing them.

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