Slashdot Asks: Is Scrum Still Relevant? (opensource.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In an article titled "Scrum is dead: breaking down the new open development method," Ahmad Nassri writes: "Among the most 'oversold as a cure' methodologies introduced to business development teams today is Scrum, which is one of several agile approaches to software development and introduced as a way to streamline the process. Scrum has become something of an intractable method, complete with its own holy text, the Manifesto for Agile Software Development , and daily devotions (a.k.a., Scrum meetings). Although Scrum may have made more sense when it was being developed in the early '90s, much has changed over the years. Startups and businesses have work forces spread over many countries and time zones, making sharing offices more difficult for employees. As our workforce world evolves, our software development methods should evolve, too." What do you think? Is Scrum still a viable approach to software development, or is it time to make way for a different process?

Comments

In my office...

[Rei]

... we develop software the old-fashioned way: incremental improvements to an ancient codebase with fundamental flaws in its core that nobody's brave enough to tackle, with irregularly-scheduled releases set into the production server without automated unit testing.

At home I develop in a more refined fashion: diving right in without much prep or research, working on it for weeks to months, then finding that the project is 100 times more complex than I expected and someone else has already done it.

Scrum tells me what jobs to stay away from

[Anonymous Coward]

If i wanted a devotion meeting I'd join alcohoolics anonymous thank you.

Re:Prone to promise too much

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Scrum has no long tasks. The very first and most fundamental step in Scum, or any agile process really, is to break down long tasks into smaller tasks.

"Okay, you type the first 5 letters, Bob, then Steve will finish the name of the function call. Jack and Nick will add the parentheses and semi-colons. Mary will press the RETURN key when it's time for a new line. Okay team, GO!!"

can't resist

[cellocgw]

Can't resist pointing out that, despite its stated objective,Scrum usually makes things take longer, not shorter. That means working Overtime, known as "OT" . Thus:

ScrOTum