Joe Hughes

SDET / Dev / QA / most things code

[Santiago @svpino]

Scrum is a cancer.

I've been writing software for 25 years, and nothing renders a software team useless like Scrum does.

Some anecdotes:

1. They tried to convince me that Poker is a planning tool, not a game.

2. If you want to be more efficient, you must add process, not remove it. They had us attending the "ceremonies," a fancy name for a buttload of meetings: stand-ups, groomings, planning, retrospectives, and Scrum of Scrums. We spent more time talking than doing.

3. We prohibited laptops in meetings. We had to stand. We passed a ball around to keep everyone paying attention.

4. We spent more time estimating story points than writing software. Story points measure complexity, not time, but we had to decide how many story points fit in a sprint.

5. I had to use t-shirt sizes to estimate software.

6. We measured how much it cost to deliver one story point and then wrote contracts where clients paid for a package of "500 story points."

7. Management lost it when they found that 500 story points in one project weren't the same as 500 story points on another project. We had many meetings to fix this.

8. Imagine having a manager, a scrum master, a product owner, and a tech lead. You had to answer to all of them and none simultaneously.

9. We paid people who told us whether we were "burning down points" fast enough. Weren't story points about complexity instead of time? Never mind.

I believe in Agile, but this ain't agile.

We brought professional Scrum trainers. We paid people from our team to get certified. We tried Scrum this way and that other way. We spent years doing it.

The result was always the same: It didn't work.

Scrum is a cancer that will eat your development team. Scrum is not for developers; it's another tool for managers to feel they are in control.

But the best about Scrum are those who look you in the eye and tell you: "If it doesn't work for you, you are doing it wrong. Scrum is anything that works for your team."

Sure it is.

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@guspower Visited in September and the place felt depressed.

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@rexromae Answer: K8s, restart shit as a service

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

Ive got a cheap squat rack in the garden, the cat decided to do a honking jobbie right next to my head whilst I had a PB attempt bench press sat on my chest. How was your day?

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@guspower "of course it is"

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

I had the most productive day today. I listened to nothing but HAIM 💃

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@david_whitney @pagerduty Jesus fucking Christ it's awful

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@guspower This video is pretty good: https://t.co/8dBKcS4csa

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

My Reddit recap

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

First time visiting London since lockdown 1. When did £7 a pint happen? #oldManGrumble

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@guspower @BritishGasHelp Post them a Polaroid, you will also need a second polaroid of you with todays newspaper to prove it’s recent

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@IanGoddard88 @SteveHyndside How much time you spending in the shed? 🧐

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

Am I suffering from Dunning-Kruger or do I actually have the ability to understand what “the data” means whenever used in conversation? Wait, just thinking about that makes me think it’s Dunning-Kruger

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

Friday startup idea: using the blockchain to trace production failures to code changes /s

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@IanGoddard88 Did the same with Breaking bad during the first lockdown

[Gus Power @guspower]

I wonder if they still have the original bag for the O2?

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

Thoughts on “just in time design?” Like don’t even bother thinking about how ‘till just before you pickup the story.

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

Do you ever feel like “fuck I wish I had my brain now, at school? It’s taken me 32 years to feel like I’m good at learning”

[Joe Hughes @CommodoreBeard]

@guspower @david_whitney Open banking?