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by humanrebar 3606 days ago
> Scrum is not opinionated about the actual development methodology so claims about how it affects the code that is written are themselves a bad smell IMO.

Scrum is actually part of the problem, IMO. I've seen many teams turn scrum into a hammer and treat all future problems as nails.

Example problem: The foobar story has failed failed for the third sprint in a row.

Likely discussed in retrospective (plausibly good ideas, mind you):

- We need to break down stories more before we estimate them.

- Or we need to stop underestimating foobar stories.

- Or we need to focus on unblocking subtasks related to foobar stories.

Probably unconsidered:

- The foobar code is a mess and needs to be refactored.

- Or the foobar subsystem is too coupled to the Fizzbuzz subsystem.

- Or the need for some developer tools to increase productivity in the foobar ecosystem.

Since scrum is methodology oriented, methodology is the first tool teams reach for when a problem is encountered. And I see this after team leads make it explicitly OK to discuss technical subjects in retrospectives.

I'm not a psychologist, so I can't describe why this phenomenon happens, but I see it regularly.

2 comments

All of the items you listed under unconsidered should be brought up by the dev team. If the dev team is uncomfortable bringing them up, then that's probably a sign of friction between the dev team and management, which is really common.
I've routinely brought up all of the unconsidered comments in retrospectives. Retros are all about making sprints better, and talking about technical problems is integral to that.