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Jakub Dovcik's Reviews > Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
Scrum - The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
by
by
While most of the principles of Scrum are definitely sensible, especially its emphasis on whole-project-capable teams working collaboratively in an egalitarian manner, encouragement of work-life balance, or planning of work based on actual performance, I could not stop feeling like this is a New Age white-collar Taylorism, engraving moralistic neoliberal social norms into the minds of common workers.
The book itself is pretty well written - for a popular "science" management book, with some cool stories and examples, although with a lot of simplistic orientalisation of management practices in Japan and martial arts (well, it is a product of the 90s) that are largely taken out of the context.
Sutherland is a very interesting person and Scum was created for software development, where it makes a lot of sense. But a lot of the premises it is based on -and the motivational language it veils them into - are painful to read. For a lot of people, work is just working and that is just okay - not everyone strives to change the world every day, especially if they go into a field where an emphasis on social value is really just self-deceit.
The discouragement of overtime and work-life balance sounds great (or one could see them as convenient for firms as they are trying to avoid having to pay for overtime), but the whole concept of Scrum is created to drain every single second of employee's energy for ticking a box that has been created to demonstrate activity. Sure, many or probably most of the teams will work on projects/tasks/'stories' that make sense and are substantive, but the whole concept of "velocity" turns a thinking and living organism into a high-performing cock within a machine.
On the other hand, the whole ideology of its short-termness and avoidance of multitasking discourages complex and exploratory thinking, developing skills within a team that do not fit into the immediate need for the next release at the end of the current sprint. When you aggregate this thinking and the whole 'lean' ideology, you get the present-day global economy, with its extreme fragility of supply chains, slow productivity growth, and lack of long-term investment. I definitely do not blame Scrum for it, but it is a clear symptom of a larger crisis we live in.
From my own experiences with scrum, the benefits it provides can outweigh its costs, if one manages to somehow avoid death by a thousand meetings.
The book itself is pretty well written - for a popular "science" management book, with some cool stories and examples, although with a lot of simplistic orientalisation of management practices in Japan and martial arts (well, it is a product of the 90s) that are largely taken out of the context.
Sutherland is a very interesting person and Scum was created for software development, where it makes a lot of sense. But a lot of the premises it is based on -and the motivational language it veils them into - are painful to read. For a lot of people, work is just working and that is just okay - not everyone strives to change the world every day, especially if they go into a field where an emphasis on social value is really just self-deceit.
The discouragement of overtime and work-life balance sounds great (or one could see them as convenient for firms as they are trying to avoid having to pay for overtime), but the whole concept of Scrum is created to drain every single second of employee's energy for ticking a box that has been created to demonstrate activity. Sure, many or probably most of the teams will work on projects/tasks/'stories' that make sense and are substantive, but the whole concept of "velocity" turns a thinking and living organism into a high-performing cock within a machine.
On the other hand, the whole ideology of its short-termness and avoidance of multitasking discourages complex and exploratory thinking, developing skills within a team that do not fit into the immediate need for the next release at the end of the current sprint. When you aggregate this thinking and the whole 'lean' ideology, you get the present-day global economy, with its extreme fragility of supply chains, slow productivity growth, and lack of long-term investment. I definitely do not blame Scrum for it, but it is a clear symptom of a larger crisis we live in.
From my own experiences with scrum, the benefits it provides can outweigh its costs, if one manages to somehow avoid death by a thousand meetings.
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Reading Progress
December 4, 2021
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Started Reading
December 26, 2021
– Shelved
December 26, 2021
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Finished Reading
