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> I have to disagree with the central argument, which is to give engineers more product management responsibilities How is it disagreeable? Scrum is a formaliz

> I have to disagree with the central argument, which is to give engineers more product management responsibilities How is it disagreeable? Scrum is a formalization of Agile, which is literally about eliminating management by giving engineers control over the project. They are intrinsically linked. It doesn't make sense otherwise. The Twelve Principles, is pretty clear that you need special people to make Agile work; that it's not for everyone. Your assessment that you don't want to go down that road is going to be true in the vast majorly of cases, and nothing in the literature disagrees with that. However, in those cases you wouldn't be using Scrum in the first place. It is clearly the wrong tool for the job if you are going to retain managers.

awill88 2y ago
The article and commenter are talking about a single management role, Product. You say “retain managers” — plural. You’re putting words in their mouth. They had something like Extreme Programming, and it was not a good time from what I heard. If you want to live in la la land of coding for a profitable business, well, sorry to break it to you, but a cohort of smart people need to be led. Notice I said led, not managed. Also, the role is called Product Owner not Product Manager, I would imagine that was a conscious choice. If a PO feels like a manager, that’s what’s wrong. And maybe why that could be is the engineering team’s fault for having an insatiable need to.. control all aspects of their day-to-day. However, it’s a business at the end of the day, not a coding playground. The article is basically suggesting POs shouldn’t control the backlog because engineers know better (essentially). Sounds like they’ve had a bad experience and want to vent about it. Fine, but it’s an immature take imho. I am an engineer myself and I think it’s insulting to the people who have to take the work that engineers do (or fail to do because they want to experiment) and cross the divide and tell the business that the work you’ve done is worth everyone’s salary. I don’t want to control the backlog with a bunch of other knuckleheads, thanks.
- randomdata 2y ago
  > You say “retain managers” — plural. You’re putting words in their mouth. The only use of "managers" was with respect to the use of Scrum itself, which is only tangentially related to what came before it. It logically cannot put words into anyone's mouth as it is not directly related to any mouths that may be near. It is only directly related to the comment that it is contained within by the additional context it setup. > The article is basically suggesting POs shouldn’t control the backlog because engineers know better (essentially). Yes, that is what Agile also says. Of course, it also says that you need the right people. We need to know more about the specific engineers to know if it is a valid take. Statistically it won't be, but perhaps it is under his unique circumstances? It is invalid to conflate his situation with someone else's. > Sounds like they’ve had a bad experience and want to vent about it. Fine, but it’s an immature take imho. I know Agile isn't cool anymore, but there was a time where the industry as a whole actually tried to embrace it. It wasn't considered immature then. Perhaps it is immature now only because it is no longer in fashion? > I am an engineer myself and I think it’s insulting If you are insulted by words on a screen, you might need to think about it harder. That is not logically sound.
  - watwut 2y ago
    Engineers are as emotional as anyone else.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    The whole industry faces very real problems managing a large project. Agile promised to make thing better and nothing else did (lots of things before made the same promise - and failed to deliver), so on a few small success stories the industry jumped. However we are now realizing that despite some good ideas, agile didn't deliver the promise we wanted. That doesn't mean agile is bad just that it wasn't the "silver bullet" management wanted. I don't think agile itself made all the promises that large projects wanted. However it made a few and then consultants seeing money jumped in and made more promises. Often agile couldn't deliver on the promises because there is good reason large projects can't allow engineers control over some of the things agile demanded engineers control. Everyone wants to throw out Agile. However I don't see anything to replace it.
    - randomdata 2y ago
      > That doesn't mean agile is bad just that it wasn't the "silver bullet" management wanted. Managers didn't want to be eliminated? Who'd a thunk it. Which is also why Agile is oft considered "bad" as management by and large never actually walked away, they just pushed some of workload off onto developers under the guise of "Agile" and half-ass adopted tools designed for a flat organizational structure in a hierarchical structure with all of the impedance mismatches to go along with that. > Everyone wants to throw out Agile. However I don't see anything to replace it. It's not so much that anyone, non-manager at least, wants to throw out Agile per se, but in this high (relatively, at least) interest rate environment there is more of a crackdown on the work people are doing, so managers are trying to reel back in the boring work they earlier tried to outsource onto developers in order to continue to justify their jobs. That is what has replaced it, so to speak.
      - bluGill 2y ago
        Upper management wants to get things done (and their golf game/whatever they do). They see software is expensive, late, and buggy. Each middle manager wants to be the person who delivers and thus gets a promotion (eventually leading to upper management). If they eliminate other middle managers on the way that is okay (depending on politics of course).
Izkata 2y ago
> Scrum is a formalization of Agile Scrum is one kind of Agile. Kanban is another. I think I remember there being a third, but not sure about that.
- randomdata 2y ago
  You're thinking of Extreme Programming (XP). Many of the Manifesto group participants came from that camp. You might say that Agile is mostly based off of XP as a result, although Schwaber is certainly among the signatories. Kanban comes from the manufacturing world. You might find some overlap with Agile, but is not directly associated. Agile is abundantly clear that it is about software. And yes, if you want to be pedantic, it might be more accurate to say that Agile is a generalization of XP and Scrum, rather than XP and Scrum being formalizations. Agile was written after. But I'm not sure that changes the intent of the original comment.

awill88 2y ago

The article and commenter are talking about a single management role, Product. You say “retain managers” — plural. You’re putting words in their mouth. They had something like Extreme Programming, and it was not a good time from what I heard. If you want to live in la la land of coding for a profitable business, well, sorry to break it to you, but a cohort of smart people need to be led. Notice I said led, not managed. Also, the role is called Product Owner not Product Manager, I would imagine that was a conscious choice. If a PO feels like a manager, that’s what’s wrong. And maybe why that could be is the engineering team’s fault for having an insatiable need to.. control all aspects of their day-to-day. However, it’s a business at the end of the day, not a coding playground. The article is basically suggesting POs shouldn’t control the backlog because engineers know better (essentially). Sounds like they’ve had a bad experience and want to vent about it. Fine, but it’s an immature take imho. I am an engineer myself and I think it’s insulting to the people who have to take the work that engineers do (or fail to do because they want to experiment) and cross the divide and tell the business that the work you’ve done is worth everyone’s salary. I don’t want to control the backlog with a bunch of other knuckleheads, thanks.

randomdata 2y ago
> You say “retain managers” — plural. You’re putting words in their mouth. The only use of "managers" was with respect to the use of Scrum itself, which is only tangentially related to what came before it. It logically cannot put words into anyone's mouth as it is not directly related to any mouths that may be near. It is only directly related to the comment that it is contained within by the additional context it setup. > The article is basically suggesting POs shouldn’t control the backlog because engineers know better (essentially). Yes, that is what Agile also says. Of course, it also says that you need the right people. We need to know more about the specific engineers to know if it is a valid take. Statistically it won't be, but perhaps it is under his unique circumstances? It is invalid to conflate his situation with someone else's. > Sounds like they’ve had a bad experience and want to vent about it. Fine, but it’s an immature take imho. I know Agile isn't cool anymore, but there was a time where the industry as a whole actually tried to embrace it. It wasn't considered immature then. Perhaps it is immature now only because it is no longer in fashion? > I am an engineer myself and I think it’s insulting If you are insulted by words on a screen, you might need to think about it harder. That is not logically sound.
- watwut 2y ago
  Engineers are as emotional as anyone else.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The whole industry faces very real problems managing a large project. Agile promised to make thing better and nothing else did (lots of things before made the same promise - and failed to deliver), so on a few small success stories the industry jumped. However we are now realizing that despite some good ideas, agile didn't deliver the promise we wanted. That doesn't mean agile is bad just that it wasn't the "silver bullet" management wanted. I don't think agile itself made all the promises that large projects wanted. However it made a few and then consultants seeing money jumped in and made more promises. Often agile couldn't deliver on the promises because there is good reason large projects can't allow engineers control over some of the things agile demanded engineers control. Everyone wants to throw out Agile. However I don't see anything to replace it.
  - randomdata 2y ago
    > That doesn't mean agile is bad just that it wasn't the "silver bullet" management wanted. Managers didn't want to be eliminated? Who'd a thunk it. Which is also why Agile is oft considered "bad" as management by and large never actually walked away, they just pushed some of workload off onto developers under the guise of "Agile" and half-ass adopted tools designed for a flat organizational structure in a hierarchical structure with all of the impedance mismatches to go along with that. > Everyone wants to throw out Agile. However I don't see anything to replace it. It's not so much that anyone, non-manager at least, wants to throw out Agile per se, but in this high (relatively, at least) interest rate environment there is more of a crackdown on the work people are doing, so managers are trying to reel back in the boring work they earlier tried to outsource onto developers in order to continue to justify their jobs. That is what has replaced it, so to speak.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Upper management wants to get things done (and their golf game/whatever they do). They see software is expensive, late, and buggy. Each middle manager wants to be the person who delivers and thus gets a promotion (eventually leading to upper management). If they eliminate other middle managers on the way that is okay (depending on politics of course).

Izkata 2y ago

> Scrum is a formalization of Agile Scrum is one kind of Agile. Kanban is another. I think I remember there being a third, but not sure about that.

randomdata 2y ago
You're thinking of Extreme Programming (XP). Many of the Manifesto group participants came from that camp. You might say that Agile is mostly based off of XP as a result, although Schwaber is certainly among the signatories. Kanban comes from the manufacturing world. You might find some overlap with Agile, but is not directly associated. Agile is abundantly clear that it is about software. And yes, if you want to be pedantic, it might be more accurate to say that Agile is a generalization of XP and Scrum, rather than XP and Scrum being formalizations. Agile was written after. But I'm not sure that changes the intent of the original comment.