[debrice]

Yes, sprints on paper are what you describe, but in reality, they rarely ensure deliveries or predictability, they even tend to hinder productivity as they narrow the body of work of a whole team. Think about it, after a week, what is usually the distribution of work of your team? For me, it was always very unbalanced, where people where working overtime and others (best case scenario) would be looking for some work to do.

I understand the author's heated post, because I've been there so many times, and I think THIS IS THE POINT of this article, the point that you are missing. Good manager shouldn't rely as much on a set tools that are broken or unfit for their team.

I my opinion, not enough people question Sprints and their viability and benefits. And he's right, backlogs are by far just a list of the things you wont do.

If your tool cannot fix your issues, the manager should. Use post-its, emails, spreadsheet, large whiteboards, hang a TV screen in the room, pdf, discussions... There is endless possibilities, be creative.

[boredmgr]

I guess all will agree that every successful product is an outcome on number of iterations and to perform progressive iterations there has to be a way / tool which can be one language across the board. That's why these tools such as Sprint exists. And I am sure if you are a good manager ( a future self ), you would sure not giving yourself a suggestion of using "post-its, emails, spreadsheets, large whiteboards , hang a TV screen, pdfs" as the preferred way of managing iterations.

[debrice]

I'm a manager, and post-its, tv screen in the room, extremely large whiteboards (all 3 walls) and spreadsheets have been my secret weapons for a long time... that and going on a long walks with my engineers 1-on-1 to discuss ideas and problems.

Tools and methodologies are guardrails, use them at the beginning as you learn the craft, get ride of them as you grow and always put meaningful conversation above all

[robertlagrant]

> backlogs are by far just a list of the things you wont do

Scrum even has a ceremony for fixing this: backlog refinement.

[debrice]

I have never been in a company that was able to deal with backlog. Albeit I have not worked at all companies, there's got to be some that successfully deal with backlog... but how many?

Is Scrum a solution that really works, or merely a great concept?

I agree with and swear by the agile manifesto (it's really amazing) but IMHO, all of its byproduct methodologies fall short in the real world, with no exception.

[robertlagrant]

You can't fix organisational issues with any process, but if people agree to do it, it's pretty good. And it has a retro in it, which is the most important meeting, where you can change the process to something that suits your needs better.