(2018-04-04) Jeffries The Agile Ecology

Ron Jeffries: The Agile Ecology. There is a connection between the 17 old men who had a meeting in Snowbird, and the poor devils working in the code mines of insurance companies in Ohio, suffering under the heel of the boot of the draconian sons of expletives who imposed a bastardized version of something called Scrum on them. We started this thing and we should at least feel sad that it has sometimes gone so far off the rails. And we should do what we can to keep it from going more off the rails, and to help some people get back on the rails.

Well, the Scrum Industrial Complex is closer to the root cause of the Ohio Insurance Mines than I am, and I think they, too, should be doing what they can to bring things back into line.

And of course, they are

At least the people I talk to are doing some things. And still programmers are asphyxiating in the dust-filled air of the Ohio Insurance Mines. Are the 90 percent of trainers and coaches who don’t even participate in the available forums doing such things? Literally no one knows. There is no Quality Control on Scrum training or coaching. None, not any, zero.

Consider taking positions like those of SAFe, that everyone needs Scrum training, not just some former BA you’ve chosen to carry the mixed job of Product Owner and Scrum Master.

Accept that if you’re in the business of changing the world, not everything you do is going to be directly paid for by the person you help, and find more ways to help people who can’t or won’t pay, including managers and team members, even ones who have never spent a dime with the Scrum Alliance.

We want to take credit for the good things that have happened, and we have every right to do so. We should also accept responsibility for the bad things that have happened, via chains of causality that we never foresaw, and we should do something about those things