[brightball]

Scrums biggest problem has always been management interpretation of sprints as deadlines (commitments) and not estimates (forecasts).

The former eventually leads teams to lowball everything to make sure they always complete everything at the expense of trying to accomplish more. Which will then lead the company to wonder why everything is so slow.

Getting people at the top to understand that challenge is the hard part.

[bboygravity]

Scrum, XP and/or Agile are not going to save you if the guy leading the project decides the hardware and firmware have to be completely re-done for no good reason other than his own opinion, lack of experience and ego mixed in with a bit of "not invented here syndrome", "if it ain't broken fix it anyway" and "make it complex not simple stupid" (recent random example).

My point being: other aspects of companies and teams are far more important than the latest fashionable project management methodologies/frameworks/philosophies.

I find it hard to care about these trends.

[brightball]

The critical piece to any framework is how work is prioritized. If it’s by 1 guy, you will have the problems you describe.

If you have an approach that forces the people doing prioritizing to weigh Return on Investment (benefit or value / estimated time) to largely guide the priorities, busywork with little benefit like you describe won’t be prioritized.

It’s critical.

[bluGill]

Often the people at the top understand. However what most developers fail to understand is the guy at the top really needs accurate estimates. the more accurate the estimate the better he can do their job. Thus they are constantly loohing for a magic bullet that gives them that. it doesm't need to be perfect, but the closer the better.

[brightball]

It's not that they need accurate estimates is that often sales people want to share those estimates externally, so anything that takes longer due to unexpected complexity becomes an accountability issue.

[erik_seaberg]

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect should have taught us not to sell things that don’t exist yet and possibly never will.

[bluGill]

There is a balance there. sometimes you need to sell on the next version's features to get enough now to develob that. Not everyone gets unlimited venture capital - and it isn't always a good idea to take it if you can.

[skydhash]

Accountability is everywhere, but software managers are always looking for the silver bullet that would let them have a stellar reputation of being on time.