Do We Need Agile Process Frameworks Like Scrum‪?‬ Agile Weekly Podcast

Jade Meskill:  Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Agile weekly podcast. I’m Jade Meskill.


Roy van de Water:  I’m Roy van de Water.


Derek Neighbors:  And I’m Derek Neighbors.


Agile Process Frameworks vs Individuals and Interactions

Jade:  I thought today, we’d talk about something, maybe a little controversial. Do we need frameworks?


Roy:  Like Rails?


Jade:  Maybe like Scrum. What do you guys think?


Derek:  No. Yes. No.


Jade:  OK.


Roy:  It’s one of those things where they’re helpful to get started by get in your way after a while, but you think they get in your way a lot sooner than they actually do.


Derek:  I like to say, if its individuals and their actions over process and tools. Why is it the first thing that we default to add to lists are hey, you need to learn a bunch of process? I think, no, they are not necessary.


However, it’s very hard to do things well if you don’t have any discipline. What process does is it allows you to learn how, as a team, to be disciplined about the work that you do. It helps highlight issues that you have that can help you improve. Basically it builds off of work that people have done before.


We know that all these things tend to really keep teams from performing well. If you’re not cross‑ctional, if you don’t have a concept of time boxing, if you don’t have a number of these things, you tend to struggle.


We’re going to go ahead and put those things before you. Learn how to use them, and as you learn how to use them, you can shed them away and probably still get really good results.


I’d say, yes and no, I don’t think you need process. Do I think that it’s hard to be good without having some guide rails to explore how you work? Yes.


Agile Process Frameworks as Guide Rails for Novices Only? (Dreyfus Model)

Roy:  I think some of it comes down to pragmatic thinking and learning talks a lot about the Dreyfus model and how early on you need rules because you don’t have enough knowledge to make your own decisions. But that rules ruin experts, and all these people that have lots of experience are now hindered by having to follow these rules when they should be trusting their intuition.


Derek:  People tend to find themselves being experts far before they’re really experts. That’s another problem there is. I call it the so fucking agile. We’re so fucking agile that we don’t need to do XYZ. I can turn on the dime. I can respond to anything. I was just like, Yeah, so you’re in chaos. That’s really great.


I don’t consider that agile. Never getting anything done because all you do is respond to every stimulus that comes your way does not make you good. It makes you undisciplined. I think that that’s difficult thing.


Roy:  I think that’s the careful distinction between thinking that you’ve arrived, that you’re there and that you’ve finished adapting Agile or whatever or finished improving and the idea of, I think I’ve grown these rules but I still need to improve and try new things all of the time because I’m not even close to where I want to be yet.


Derek:  Yeah, so the litmus test I use is if somebody believes that the rules don’t belong to them and they don’t want them. They’ll throw a fit if they have to follow rules, they’re probably not really a master. If somebody says, I think that these rules could be bent but I don’t really have a problem with the rules and if it’s going to cause you all sorts of grief to not adhere to these rules, then fine, I’ll adhere to them.


I generally find that’s the person that’s probably OK without actually having rules because what they’re saying is, I don’t think the rules hinder me so much that I can’t be effective, but I do think I know the rules well enough that when they need to be bent in certain ways, I could get more performance out of them.


Where the amateur tends to say, I just don’t want the rules at all. Any r