[Spiwux]

I'm going to get blasted for this, but you *are* doing scrum wrong. Scrum was invented by engineers to defend themselves against incompetent middle managers. The moment you let management take the process over and warp it you are already doing it wrong.

Story points and sprints are a *self-calibrating* tool that will give you an advance warning (nicely visualized in burn-down charts) if an estimate you might have given a middle manager will be missed.

You do not "decide" how many points fit in a sprint, you just work at a sustainable pace and *measure* how many points fit in a sprint.

Nearly every single point in that tweet just screams bad management and bad engineers without any agency.

[lelanthran]

> Story points and sprints are a self-calibrating tool that will give you an advance warning (nicely visualized in burn-down charts) if an estimate you might have given a middle manager will be missed.

> You do not "decide" how many points fit in a sprint, you just work at a sustainable pace and measure how many points fit in a sprint.

I don't know how you can use both "sprint"[1] and "sustainable" in the same post with a straight face.

[1] A sprint, by definition, is an unsustainable burst of speed. The word "unsustainable" is literally in the definition.

[jredwards]

You're arguing that the entire system is invalid because one of the concepts is poorly named?

[vincentkriek]

This is turning into a discussion about naming, which is important. I think the sprints are maybe wrongly worded, but I struggle to find a better term.

User stories are not actual stories with a plots as well, but the idea makes sense

[lelanthran]

Maybe, but the people you are telling the word "sprint" to do not interpret it as "iteration" or "phase", they are interpreting it as "unsustainable burst of speed".

When you tell people the word "story", they know exactly what you mean, because the word story is used all the time for things without plots ("So, what's your story?" comes to mind).

We frequently use the word story to mean "your side of things"; in civil litigation for example.

[pas]

we call them cycles (weekly cycles, or bi-weekly cycles, mostly they are product planning cycles, and also usually the basic time interval after the previous planing assumptions should be checked/revised, etc.)

// linear also calls them cycles, https://linear.app/features/plan#cycles , but linear is a bit meh

[sklivvz1971]

Not only I'm not blasting you but also I'm right there with you.

I've always said that Scrum doesn't fix problems, but it makes them more evident so you can fix them.

Teams that don't realize this are going to be unhappy about Scrum, but in my opinion they wouldn't be happy without.

Often the problems are one of these:

- Focusing on estimates. In scrum, a team doesn't really need any estimates beyond planning what they will do in the next two weeks. Planning poker, story points, estimations are just a means to that end. If you don't like them, don't use them.

- Focusing on ceremonies without understanding how to use them (or when to drop them!). I haven't done stand ups in years. I use online tools like geek bot. Retrospectives are just as useful as the number of problems you actually solve after they are pointed out. Planning is only useful if it produces teamwork, if the engineers all work in 1-person silos, it becomes a joke.

- Not understanding that Agile > Scrum. If you think you can be more agile without some parts of scrum, drop the parts you don't need. Being able to change the rules of the game in-flight is part of agile (and of scrum).

[knallfrosch]

Sorry, but that's a catch-all defense. You're either doing too much Scrum, or not enough, and if it's not working you're doing it wrong. But the Party is always right, no matter what! Read our manifesto and attend some certificated training.

[bdlowery]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37134050

> Not everybody knows that, but Scrum was invented to manage a team of dysfunctional COBOL programmers at a bank, not for product-led tech companies, and certainly not for startups.

> If you're mostly hiring juniors, low-skilled, unpassionate, unable to work autonomously without constant handlholding, reactive instead of proactive people, then you'll certainly need some micromanaging SDLC like Scrum.

[knallfrosch]

Agree, but the warnings are for management, not for you. What do you care whether something's finished? Shoulda hired more interchangeable devs or lowered the expectations.

[musicale]

> bad management and bad engineers without any agency.

bad management destroys agency

[replyifuagree]

Yep, Scrum can't fix bad management!