Positive or negative? Looking at a role on agile team
21 replies (most recent on top)
Agile is the shitshow that is Wells Fargo.
@nfj+1mVxRNGu states we are not agile at Wells Fargo but scrumfall. I found an excellent article on scrumfall from CIO magazine.
https://www.cio.com/article/309171/scrumfall-when-agile-becomes-waterfall-by-another-name.html
Here is the summary:
The article criticizes the misuse and misinterpretation of Agile development principles in software development. It argues that businesses are undermining the intended benefits and human-centric values of Agile by imposing outdated management practices and stifling collaboration.
The author describes how Waterfall methods are infiltrating Agile practices, creating what they call "Scrumfall." In Scrumfall, top-down micromanagement and hierarchical structures are reestablished, hindering flexibility and treating software engineers as mere code-producing resources. This contradicts the Agile Manifesto, which emphasizes individuals, collaboration, and responding to change.
The article highlights the misuse of story points as a major issue in Scrumfall. Story points are intended to measure complexity, not time or deadlines. However, many businesses tie story points to timelines and expect engineers to adhere to fixed schedules, disregarding the Agile principle of valuing people over processes.
Scrumfall is criticized for its resemblance to the Waterfall model, which restricts autonomy, collaboration, and adaptability. The author argues that genuine conversations, collaboration, and the emergence of better ideas are essential in complex software engineering projects. They assert that Scrumfall fails to embrace uncertainty and change, resulting in subpar code quality, missed deadlines, and burnt-out engineers.
The article suggests that Agile development recognizes the inherent complexity and non-deterministic nature of software engineering. It encourages embracing uncertainty and empowering smart people to find optimal solutions through collaboration. While acknowledging the need for structure and alignment, the author emphasizes the importance of trusting and empowering teams to make decisions and adapt to evolving circumstances.
To unlock the true potential of Agile, the article concludes by urging a recommitment to its core principles. It calls for a shift away from measuring vanity units of work and prioritizing the value delivered. By eliminating the remnants of Waterfall practices and fostering a human-centric culture, businesses can fully realize the benefits of Agile development.
Agile..... let's all meet in the office, whooops half those dev are in India, now what do we do? Oh well, we spent millions of dollars getting it up and running, let's make do. Which really means, it's a bust.
Next
Plan on coming in the office 3 days per week. Recent change from 1 LOL
Wells will never get it right - WF is all command and control micromanagement which is the opposite of what’s in the agile manifesto
Would prefer Kanban* style, but keeping daily stand-ups for status reporting, blockers, etc. And please dispense with the required given, when then, and as a blah, b*sht. Give me that when you have anyone who knows enough about what they want to even make a succinct and informed story. 75% of the work is just polluting the JIRA task with nonsense information.
Rolling chaos.
Releases are moving target with constantly changing goals. The spirits get started based upon pointing (capacity), half way through the surprise required changes hit, and mad scramble to complete everything.
Join agile if you like to be micromanaged, having to constantly explain why you aren't done, while not being able to blame late additions, and constantly change stories (refinement) throughout the entire sprint.
Wf is ag-fall, not agile.
sucks
Anyone else find it ironic it's called Agile when everyone in tech is always complaining about their offshore peers, awful tech executive leadership, horrible processes, and antiquated technology.
The launch of Agile so far has been a disaster to say the least and the scrum masters explaining it will get better in time with the look on his face was priceless. We are so behind in our work now plus less manpower it will take a very long time to catch up. Spoke to a professional agile and he stated definitely not for every company and much harder for banks to utilize.
It is constant pestering on what did you get done, when are you going to finish, we have a target date to meet for this project.
It's really just waterfall in Jira instead of a Project Manager keeping track in an Excel spreadsheet.
After losing millions of dollars and missing dates because of the uncoordinated poorly planned agile roll out...I see someone finally waking up..but that won't happen for 2 years when it can't be hidden from Sr mgmt anymore...
Agile is not the answer to everything...
Plenty of PhD level papers written backing me up on that..but ..some overpaid tech manager convinced a bunch of non tech people it was their savior...
WF claims to be Agile, but has hard dates for deliverable.
Fake agile.
It is an absolute mess at Wells Fargo.
It is being used as a tool for micromanagement. Middle management talks out both sides of their mouths. They claim that quality work is more important than speed, but then they hammer teams on velocity.
Right now, due to the cloud push, layoffs and tight deadlines, teams are having to work their backsides off to meet timelines. Management looks at their reports and sees what they think means that Agile is working great. Teams are doing more work than ever before with less people.
But they are so disconnected from the front line employees that are getting severely burned out.
It is not sustainable. But middle management (and upper) are too clueless to see this.
As someone in a “customer” role of a Technology group at WFC, I would categorize it as “total sh-t show”
Worst for companies with 50 plus age group and best for companies with below 30 age group, Product based, really innovative, challenging, problem solving and ambitious projects. Not suitable for banks.
Busey here…
A
Great
Inefficient
Leadership
Exposed
We are not agile at WF, we are Scrumfall.
Good but not for a bank. Bad for Wells.
It's good in theory