Category: hills-cases

I watch The Expanse to force myself to exercise. Today this quote hit me pretty hard.

Where do we place the responsibility–surely not blame–when things don't go well on a Scrum team? Who's responsible for taking action? (A bit of something I wrote on Twitter, lightly edited.)

I'm not finished ripping Scrum a new one, but I don't want to come off all negative. So let's talk a bit about what I'd like to see done.

We've spoken often before about the backlog. Let's get down and dirty today. Delenda est backlogus or something like that.

If your factory pollutes the river, you're supposed to clean it up. If you plant kudzu to combat erosion, you are responsible for its destruction of everything in its path. If you swallow a spider to catch the fly, and die when you swallow the horse, of course -- it's on you.

The Sprint causes serious problems in many Scrum installations. What are some ways to mitigate those problems?

Let's consider the Scrum Sprint. What's the strongest case we can make against it? It harms people, how's that for a case?

In the spirit of inquiry, fairness, and a generally bad attitude because it's raining, let's consider how strong a case we can make against Scrum. It might be fun.

These articles about hills to die on are in response to a continuing trope on Twitter and elsewhere, to the effect that X is bad, or Y is better than X, and therefore don't do X do Y. These are amusing, provocative, and rather frequently ... mistaken.

When are Sprints a good idea, when not so good? What are their values, and their costs?

Bashing of Scrum (and other methods) is a common form of Internet Entertainment, and not without reason. Some of the concerns are more accurate than others. Choose carefully which hill you want to die on. In this series we'll explore some hills.