Scrum Bully

I've calmed down now. Two glasses of Medoc later and the fact I've wasted an entire day of my life: otherwise known as a sprint planning doesn’t seem quite so hideous. I spent most of the day pondering the irony that since adopting scrum the speed of software delivery has gone down almost in direct proportion to the rise in adoption of speed related terms: velocity, sprint and burn down.

To question this nonsense is to disbelief and to disbelief will only result in the scrum inquisition. This, as I've experienced first hand, is at best a self referential diatribe or utter sophistry at worst. I wonder if scrum was started not as a conspiracy by 3i to sell more post it notes but actually by the church of scientology. It’s almost if it’s an experiment to see who is genuinely mush brained.

The scrum meister insists everything must come from the teams and represent a commitment. The only commitment required around here is for someone to commit these lunatics before they actually hurt someone. The saving grace is the client is only marginally more daft and therefore doesn't seem to fully realise how badly their money is being spunked away.

Today I had to endure a full day of sprint planning - yep my little scrum munchkins apparently that is not in itself a total oxymoron. To the casual observer the ribaldry, the flurry of post-it notes, the false bonhomie, the gimp shouting "scrum of scrums" every 30 minutes, and the swathes of disinterested developers racking up Wii high scores in no way should be interpreted as total muppetry - despite the obvious parallels.

I am not a convert to the new fascism as you might have gathered. It seems to me that scrum has been adopted on this project frankly as the last redoubt before the client scales our buggy ramparts and imparts the final blow; a salvo of critical defects causing our SLA to crumble.

When common sense fails, when competent management flees over the horizon with its arse on fire, when all else is lost then bring in General Zod and his two scrum masters of the apocalypse. They may not save you but my god they’ll spend your cash peddling the software equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes. Hurrah for touchy feely, right back down to earthy, scrumification.