Excellent article Adam, I agree with all of it. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
I hate scrum and SAFe with a passion. I'd rather do waterfall. Or throw myself off a cliff.
I don't normally comment, you've inspired me to add two things:
1. No agile "method" has ever come up with an alternative governance model to scope
2. It's possible to run good agile in corporates if you do
Governing an agile project using epics or any sort of backlog is governing to scope - and a burndown chart is not governance because it makes no promise to the business (aka the funders) at all.
I've had statistically relevant success (250+ projects, sold my business to a listed company) across a mix of paid corporate, scale ups and start ups jobs by coming up with a way of stating the project's objective without committing to any degree of scope/function. Basically the "benefits" side only, from the "cost/benefit" business case.
An example is reframing from "rebuild the call centre system for News Corp" to "halve call handling time for 90% of calls". Or from "we need a new offer letter system in a $3bn turnover university" to "send 90% of offer letters in less than 3 weeks".
This results is full autonomy for the team to figure out the "how" of delivery because as long as they hit that goal for a subset of users, they can demonstrate progress from month 1 without solving the whole thing for everyone.
Business folks love it after the first shock because there's no argument as to whether you're delivering to promise. You have real people using real software (in production, not test) but you're doing it gradually so you don't have to build all integrations and features at once. You can literally release something for 1 out of 2,500 call centre operators and say "that worked for that person" if you've halved call handling time. Even for an 18-month project.
I'm a big believer in self-employment too, being self-employed :)
(I got into XP in the early days in the "eXtreme Tuesday Club" in the late 90's, then suffered Scrum briefly before moving on to Lean/Kanban. I've had one of the Manifesto signatories on a big project in the noughties and spent some time with a couple of others over drinks.)
I like that a lot! If you let go of scope and manage by objective that does add a great deal of autonomy to engineering, and gives the business the "accountability" they want. That seems like a win/win.
A very excellent article! Self-employment in some form is the ideal way.
Another point I want to add is to not squander money on dining out or ordering in or on even on buying coffee while out. Take your food from home which will be much healthier anyway, also cheaper. You can fill a bottle with coffee too. Don't rent the most expensive place. The point is to save money, let it grow, allowing you to stop remaining a slave to the system for your entire life.
Excellent article Adam, I agree with all of it. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
I hate scrum and SAFe with a passion. I'd rather do waterfall. Or throw myself off a cliff.
I don't normally comment, you've inspired me to add two things:
1. No agile "method" has ever come up with an alternative governance model to scope
2. It's possible to run good agile in corporates if you do
Governing an agile project using epics or any sort of backlog is governing to scope - and a burndown chart is not governance because it makes no promise to the business (aka the funders) at all.
I've had statistically relevant success (250+ projects, sold my business to a listed company) across a mix of paid corporate, scale ups and start ups jobs by coming up with a way of stating the project's objective without committing to any degree of scope/function. Basically the "benefits" side only, from the "cost/benefit" business case.
An example is reframing from "rebuild the call centre system for News Corp" to "halve call handling time for 90% of calls". Or from "we need a new offer letter system in a $3bn turnover university" to "send 90% of offer letters in less than 3 weeks".
This results is full autonomy for the team to figure out the "how" of delivery because as long as they hit that goal for a subset of users, they can demonstrate progress from month 1 without solving the whole thing for everyone.
Business folks love it after the first shock because there's no argument as to whether you're delivering to promise. You have real people using real software (in production, not test) but you're doing it gradually so you don't have to build all integrations and features at once. You can literally release something for 1 out of 2,500 call centre operators and say "that worked for that person" if you've halved call handling time. Even for an 18-month project.
I'm a big believer in self-employment too, being self-employed :)
(I got into XP in the early days in the "eXtreme Tuesday Club" in the late 90's, then suffered Scrum briefly before moving on to Lean/Kanban. I've had one of the Manifesto signatories on a big project in the noughties and spent some time with a couple of others over drinks.)
I like that a lot! If you let go of scope and manage by objective that does add a great deal of autonomy to engineering, and gives the business the "accountability" they want. That seems like a win/win.
A very excellent article! Self-employment in some form is the ideal way.
Another point I want to add is to not squander money on dining out or ordering in or on even on buying coffee while out. Take your food from home which will be much healthier anyway, also cheaper. You can fill a bottle with coffee too. Don't rent the most expensive place. The point is to save money, let it grow, allowing you to stop remaining a slave to the system for your entire life.
SCRUM = Stressful, Confrontational, Repetitive, Unmanageable Madness