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How does Scrum micromanage and/or ignore human psychology?

by cygned 5y ago

watwut 5y ago
Micromanagement - there is literally ability to make own decisions. You have to accountability either. Every single tiny aspect of work is dictated by somebody else, commitee or some kind of process. Personal guess: groups full of people with high interest in people and great social skills won't produce something like scrum. It exists only because tech can give decision power to people who don't have those. Human psychology: to large extend the above. It leads to absurd conflicts and power struggles over nonsense. Then it blames people who actually reacted in predictable way. It creates unnecessary hard social situations. It is also massively demotivating. In fact, the components of motivations in pretty much any other fields are autonomy, mastery, accountability. Scrum lacks all three.
- cygned 5y ago
  > Every single tiny aspect of work is dictated by somebody else, commitee or some kind of process. That is not the way Scrum is meant to be implemented. The goal is to have a cross-functional, empowered team with the ability to make their own decision. The Product Owner - as part of that team - makes ultimate decisions as to what the product will be. > It creates unnecessary hard social situations Yes, social conflicts in team can be tough. Following the values of Scrum, respect and openness in particular, helps teams sort these things out. I know that in practice, it involves a lot of skill to guide a team through those phases. > the components of motivations in pretty much any other fields are autonomy, mastery, accountability You are absolutely right. If you read through the Scrum guide, you will find all those aspects in there. I think what you are describing, though, is how Scrum is "lived" in many organizations, which have difficulties empowering teams and provide the environment necessary to do Scrum. In these situations, the answer is often that Scrum simply don't work, it's clashing with your culture and structure. Many teams opt to implement parts of Scrum - which is fine and might work exceptionally well, but it's not Scrum.
  - watwut 5y ago
    They might not meant it, but that is what it creates. It does not create empowered workers. It does not even talk about people or individuals, it is always team. But "the team" does not make decisions, individuals do. There are emergent decisions, coming out of the system, but no empowerment to anyone (maybe except PO). > Following the values of Scrum, respect and openness in particular, helps teams sort these things out. I know that in practice, it involves a lot of skill to guide a team through those phases. "Respect" helps to solve conflicts in literally any kind of methodology. And healthy asertivity too. That does not make Scrum special. It still makes it harder then other methodologies. It still leads to harder and more emotional conflicts. Probably because people with no feeling of control are fighting over control > If you read through the Scrum guide, you will find all those aspects in there. That is not true. Scrum does not give any agency to people working in team, only to "team" as a collective entity. People working inside the team work at 2-4 hours long tasks at maximum, all the problem solving was done "by system". Individuals are not improving, except in following the process.
ThalesX 5y ago
It establishes a set of steps that need to be followed (often time daily) and interactions to be had regardless of the nature of the work and the psychology of evolving unique set of relationships inside a social group? How does it not?
- cygned 5y ago
  Aren’t these interactions put in place to create transparency across the team regarding progress and purpose as well as empirical validation? I am not sure how that necessarily clashes with social structures inside the Scrum Team or micro manages its members.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Transparency is provided by a Jira board - and the board is always up to date. Purpose and blockers are better discussed 1:1 or in small groups with whoever is in charge of dealing with the stakeholders.
  - ThalesX 5y ago
    > I am not sure how that necessarily clashes with social structures inside the Scrum Team or micro manages its members. I would expect emergent behavior from said team (which I consider a team; not a SCRUM team; a human team working on software) to be a better representation of who they are as humans and of how they best think they should organize in order to attain the company goals. As for the micromanagement, I would love to hear an explanation of how SCRUM is *not* micromanagement when every day, a guy (which in my decade long experience has always been either a manager-role or someone wanting to be a manager) comes and gets the report on the tasks that you work to the granularity of one hour (sometimes even 30 minutes for properly crazy SCRUM masters) and intervenes afterwards if he considers it needed. > Aren’t these interactions put in place to create transparency across the team regarding progress and purpose as well as empirical validation? Depends on how big you think the team is... If we're talking about a small cross-functional team, I've never had as much transparency and signal over noise over progress, purpose as well as empirical validation, than I had working with a bunch of great people (healthy mix of junior, middle and senior), going out eating every day for lunch (usually more than one hour :o) and discussing. If we're talking about the organization as a team, then yeah, clearly more transparency regarding progress for them because before this whole SCRUM thing they didn't have a load & run way of creating an analytics pipeline for their software projects. Look, you're clearly in the SCRUM side of the stadium and I'm squarely in the emergent-process side, and it's been a discussion for aeons of which I am tired. What I am arguing is not pro / anti SCRUM, what I am arguing is that SCRUM as most enforced things "micromanage and/or ignore human psychology".

How does Scrum micromanage and/or ignore human psychology?

by cygned 5y ago

How does Scrum micromanage and/or ignore human psychology?

Micromanagement - there is literally ability to make own decisions. You have to accountability either. Every single tiny aspect of work is dictated by somebody else, commitee or some kind of process. Personal guess: groups full of people with high interest in people and great social skills won't produce something like scrum. It exists only because tech can give decision power to people who don't have those. Human psychology: to large extend the above. It leads to absurd conflicts and power struggles over nonsense. Then it blames people who actually reacted in predictable way. It creates unnecessary hard social situations. It is also massively demotivating. In fact, the components of motivations in pretty much any other fields are autonomy, mastery, accountability. Scrum lacks all three.

cygned 5y ago
> Every single tiny aspect of work is dictated by somebody else, commitee or some kind of process. That is not the way Scrum is meant to be implemented. The goal is to have a cross-functional, empowered team with the ability to make their own decision. The Product Owner - as part of that team - makes ultimate decisions as to what the product will be. > It creates unnecessary hard social situations Yes, social conflicts in team can be tough. Following the values of Scrum, respect and openness in particular, helps teams sort these things out. I know that in practice, it involves a lot of skill to guide a team through those phases. > the components of motivations in pretty much any other fields are autonomy, mastery, accountability You are absolutely right. If you read through the Scrum guide, you will find all those aspects in there. I think what you are describing, though, is how Scrum is "lived" in many organizations, which have difficulties empowering teams and provide the environment necessary to do Scrum. In these situations, the answer is often that Scrum simply don't work, it's clashing with your culture and structure. Many teams opt to implement parts of Scrum - which is fine and might work exceptionally well, but it's not Scrum.
- watwut 5y ago
  They might not meant it, but that is what it creates. It does not create empowered workers. It does not even talk about people or individuals, it is always team. But "the team" does not make decisions, individuals do. There are emergent decisions, coming out of the system, but no empowerment to anyone (maybe except PO). > Following the values of Scrum, respect and openness in particular, helps teams sort these things out. I know that in practice, it involves a lot of skill to guide a team through those phases. "Respect" helps to solve conflicts in literally any kind of methodology. And healthy asertivity too. That does not make Scrum special. It still makes it harder then other methodologies. It still leads to harder and more emotional conflicts. Probably because people with no feeling of control are fighting over control > If you read through the Scrum guide, you will find all those aspects in there. That is not true. Scrum does not give any agency to people working in team, only to "team" as a collective entity. People working inside the team work at 2-4 hours long tasks at maximum, all the problem solving was done "by system". Individuals are not improving, except in following the process.

ThalesX 5y ago

It establishes a set of steps that need to be followed (often time daily) and interactions to be had regardless of the nature of the work and the psychology of evolving unique set of relationships inside a social group? How does it not?

cygned 5y ago
Aren’t these interactions put in place to create transparency across the team regarding progress and purpose as well as empirical validation? I am not sure how that necessarily clashes with social structures inside the Scrum Team or micro manages its members.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Transparency is provided by a Jira board - and the board is always up to date. Purpose and blockers are better discussed 1:1 or in small groups with whoever is in charge of dealing with the stakeholders.
- ThalesX 5y ago
  > I am not sure how that necessarily clashes with social structures inside the Scrum Team or micro manages its members. I would expect emergent behavior from said team (which I consider a team; not a SCRUM team; a human team working on software) to be a better representation of who they are as humans and of how they best think they should organize in order to attain the company goals. As for the micromanagement, I would love to hear an explanation of how SCRUM is *not* micromanagement when every day, a guy (which in my decade long experience has always been either a manager-role or someone wanting to be a manager) comes and gets the report on the tasks that you work to the granularity of one hour (sometimes even 30 minutes for properly crazy SCRUM masters) and intervenes afterwards if he considers it needed. > Aren’t these interactions put in place to create transparency across the team regarding progress and purpose as well as empirical validation? Depends on how big you think the team is... If we're talking about a small cross-functional team, I've never had as much transparency and signal over noise over progress, purpose as well as empirical validation, than I had working with a bunch of great people (healthy mix of junior, middle and senior), going out eating every day for lunch (usually more than one hour :o) and discussing. If we're talking about the organization as a team, then yeah, clearly more transparency regarding progress for them because before this whole SCRUM thing they didn't have a load & run way of creating an analytics pipeline for their software projects. Look, you're clearly in the SCRUM side of the stadium and I'm squarely in the emergent-process side, and it's been a discussion for aeons of which I am tired. What I am arguing is not pro / anti SCRUM, what I am arguing is that SCRUM as most enforced things "micromanage and/or ignore human psychology".