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by vannevar 1283 days ago
>I'd argue 'good enough' process is all you need even with average teams.

That's sort of a tautology, right? If it's 'good enough', that implies it's a good process. In my experience, Scrum is a good enough process, with very little wasted overhead. It keeps the team focused, limits their in-flight work, unblocks them and offers regular iterations with feedback.

I'd agree that over-optimization is sometimes a problem, but when something as simple as scrum fails, it's usually down to the basics, like poor meeting practices, or micromanagement, or something outside of the development process entirely, like badly underbidding the project. No amount of process will save a project that was doomed from the start due to poor budgeting of time or money.

1 comments

I think 'good enough' is just an expression to mean it doesn't need to be perfect or very elaborate. Unfortunately the term scrum these days is far from precise and does not guarantee it'll be lightweight, but the principles I definitely agree with. I've seen all sorts of things, including people over-focusing on the scrum process and nitpicking about all sorts of irrelevant things. I've worked with and without scrum masters in teams as an IC and manager. I think having a scrum master is often unjustified overhead, but having an experienced SM in new teams or teams with an inexperienced manager or lacking in soft-skills, it can help fill the gaps.

And yeah you said it well at the end. There are many other things that I believe are more relevant than the process, but you do need a process teams can follow.