| The author mentions this, but I'd like to insist on it a bit more: Scrum is a system of managing people, not a software development methodology. It's about transforming programmers into cogs and gently forcing them to obey certain rituals every day, until they slowly give up their individual creativity and initiative and become good 'team players' . And when someone says 'team player', I hear 'you belong to us now'. I disliked scrum since the moment it was decreed upon our team. And that's because pretty soon our team became obsessed with points and respecting the religion rather than doing the actual work. The final drop came when I refactored some code, made it twice as fast using half as much memory (the proverbial 'much better'), only to have to fight the team to accept the changes, because that wasn't in the backlog. Methodology is only good when it helps you achieve your goals easier and faster, safer, etc. But when the methodology becomes the goal, then your job changes into satisfying the methodology, rather then being the best at what you like and enjoy. And this is the exact status quo that larger organisations love - people focused on small irrelevant tasks, while the 'grand scheme' is determined by management. Not for me. I use certain parts of it in my work today (develop in sprints, demo at the end of sprint, planning, backlog and current tasks), but if I see "we use scrum" in the job description, then I'm not your man. |