[sgarland]

Zero distractions is a nice thought, but I’ll settle for fewer.

My main issue with Scrum is that it’s designed to boil often complex tasks down into tiny pieces, such that anyone can pick them up and do them. The administrative and mental overhead with slicing tasks up (and holding meetings to do so) is significant, and frustrating. In a high-performing team where you have specialists, let people do what they’re good at. If someone doesn’t know Terraform, jumping into a complicated task involving it isn’t a great idea; instead, have them take on things they can do, and occasionally shadow the expert doing it to pick some knowledge up.

I’m also a big believer in gating off chunks of your day explicitly for learning. Your manager has to be onboard with this obviously, but dedicating an hour to increase your knowledge pays dividends over time (now there are two TF experts, etc.)

[steve1977]

I'm not sure if you're confusing Scrum with Kanban. In Scrum, the team can (and should) absolutely assign tasks based on skills of individual members. There is no requirement that everyone can do everything.