Scrum? Agile? Really?

Does anyone remember the Agile Manifesto? Some twenty years ago, an angry and frustrated software development community came up with very simple guidelines to help reframe development projects around what really mattered: developing software that was enjoyable to use.

Emphasis was placed on the collaboration between stakeholder and developer. The notion of shared ownership of the project was brought back to the table. Ultimately, the hope was to develop a sense of empathy amongst the developer, the client and the end user. It looked like we were headed in the right direction.

Now we’e got Scrum: A mysteriously popular framework that claims to implement the Agile methodology. In my opinion, it does the exact opposite and introduces a terribly rigid structure with an annoyingly large amount of extra processes. All that goes against the principles of the Agile Manifesto.

The problem with Scrum is that it relies heavily on metrics and reporting, requiring teams to track progress by using burn-down charts, velocity charts, and other metrics. While these metrics can help identify bottlenecks and improve processes, they can also create pressure to meet arbitrary deadlines and goals, hindering creativity and flexibility. In the end, it makes us lose sight of the bigger picture.

As a matter of fact, there is a direct parallel between Scrum and the concept of “minute factor calculation” that was popular in factories in the late 1990s. Both are examples of how an approach that appears to optimise one aspect of a process can actually be counterproductive to the overall goal. Minute factor calculation only improved local optima, and the theory of constraints has demonstrated that focusing on local optima is a sure way to crash the whole system. Just look at the bloated nature of Facebook today. It’s lost its direction and strayed from its original purpose as a simple and fun-to-use networking tool.

In my opinion, it is crucial to consider how individual tasks fit into the larger process and how they contribute to the ultimate goal. Flexibility, creativity, and adaptability are essential components of any successful project or process, and methodologies that prioritise these qualities are often more effective in the long run. Scrum, on the other hand, has shifted the scope and responsibility of the project manager to the developer, and by doing so, completely removed agility from the development process and introduced unnecessary ceremony.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like what we used to do before the Agile Manifesto?