Slashdot Mirror
Highly-Paid Developers As ScrumMasters?
An anonymous reader writes 'At my company, our mis-implementation of Agile includes the employment of some of our most highly-paid, principal engineers as ScrumMasters. This has effectively resulted in a loss of those engineering functions as these engineers now dedicate their time to ScrumMastery. Furthermore, the ScrumMasters either cannot or do not separate their roles as Team Leads with those of ScrumMastery and — worse — seem to be completely unaware that this poor implementation of Agile development is harmful to our velocity. To date, I have chalked this up to poor leadership, a general lack of understanding of Agile, and an inability to change from traditional roles left over from the waterfall development mode. In addition, I have contended that, for a given Scrum Team, the role of ScrumMaster should be filled by someone of lower impact, such as an intern brought in specifically for that purpose. But I would like to put the questions to Slashdotters as to whether they have seen these same transitional difficulties, what the results have been at their respective companies, or whether they just plain disagree with my assertion that principal engineers should not be relegated to the roles of ScrumMasters.'
I wish I could try this scrum in a safe environment, I need some sort of ScrumVM.
"Our mis-implementation of Agile includes.." ..is a pretty good idea for a ThinkGeek t-shirt.
funniest tag on a post ever
What the fuck is a ScrumMaster? What the fuck is this person asking? Seriously, how did this get in my RSS reader?
Could we please get some explanatory links in here?
While this is not my area of expertise, I think I can explain. His team leaders/scrotum masters are poor leaders. They don't seem to understand flexibility. He on the other hand, he thinks he understands flexibility. And he wants an intern to be the scrotum master.
The only part that I find confusing is that interns are usually the slaves, not the masters. Somehow, this guy thinks that a new slave can suddenly become a master just like that. That, I don't think so. So I'm either misunderstanding something, or this guy is missing the bigger picture. The issue that the team lead is overburdened is probably a very real problem, that I don't doubt. But it seems to me, this anonymous poster would just be trading one problem for another. An intern doesn't have the experience. An intern doesn't have the authority. One might as very well leave the scrotum alone if there is no one there that can handle it.
Too bad your company isn't into wrongly implementing total quality leadership or you don't have a few blackbelts to incorrectly implement LEAN. That would set you guys straight.
I can see it now. Several years from now, a developer who has been working, doing heads down coding, doing his job, and getting the projects finished, goes for an interview...
"Have you any experience being a ScrumMaster"
"A what?"
"A ScrumMaster"
"I'm sorry, I don't play those online fantasy games"
"No, that's not what I mean"
"Oh...well, I don't play rugby either."
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.