I agree with all of this. The agile scrum methodology is not all bad. The issue is the mechanical way it is applied.
The Problems
My current team has recently adopted Scrum and started with two-week sprints. Issues have already developed and it reminds me of why I hate Scrum.
For this particular rant, I’ll define Scrum as the methodology developed by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland and documented in “The Scrum Guide.”
In my humble opinion, Scrum is not agile and, in practice, not very flexible. It is not agile because of its emphasis on time blocks for planning, typically two weeks. More on that later. It is not flexible in practice because there are strong adherents to the cause (aka zealots) who insist on following whatever they believe to be Scrum to the letter. The disciples have taken over!
Now let’s take a look at what Scrum is. “Scrum is lightweight, simple to understand, difficult to master.” Oh right, that is just the kind of process I want to adopt: one that is difficult to master. Major strike one against Scrum in my book.
Let’s take a look at the basic terminology: a “daily scrum” and “sprints.”
Apparently, a group of dirty men pushing against each other in a big pile is the metaphor for doing your daily routine of making sure the there are no blockers on the project. I prefer something a bet less sporty and a lot less aggressive: a daily standup. Same basic drill of what you did, what you are going to do and no blockers. But without the aggressive overtones.
Now on to sprints. In an industry where burn out from working extra hours is a problem, that is just what we want: a metaphor so management can tell everyone they just need to sprint faster. And then let’s put that in a two-week time box to regularly amp up the pressure to produce more. Looks to me like a great management technique to maximize free overtime from the staff. It’s amazing we don’t have a programmer’s union to clean this stuff up. I myself believe in 40-hour weeks and anything over that should be a rare emergency.
Source: Why I Hate Scrum – DZone Agile