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I'm having Hot Shots: Part Deux flashbacks... "Do not take literally!
Repeat: do not take literally!"
Agile has strict rules around its definition. Agile does not mean
"bend and twist to make things work by any means possible". This is
one of the many breakdowns in understanding that lead to the failure
of a process. Assumptions are made and details are
disregarded/forgotten/not learned, and a perfectly good process gets a
bad rep as people try to make compromises that contradict the intent
of the process.
So... If you're not doing scrum right, guess what? You're not doing
scrum! You can dog-paddle in an office chair, but it's not swimming.
You can complete a full 5k course on roller blades but it's not a run.
You can microwave an entree but it's not a home-cooked meal.
Just because you say you're adhering to a model doesn't mean you are,
and doesn't mean you should. Obviously you aren't remotely doing
scrum, so have that honest talk with management and tell them how it
would work better to involve you to ensure features are appropriately
documented (that is, have a plan ready to go before you go to them).
Get the docs out of the scrum D(s)oD - or redefine docs as something
they can pass off to you for your doc purposes - so the scrum teams
can move forward and so you can move forward without wasting all of
your time in 7 daily stand-up meetings and so forth.
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Kat Kuvinka <katkuvinka -at- hotmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Upper management (VP-level) is very involved, but there is a breakdown when
> it comes to something they do not want to do, for example, have a writer
> embedded on each team. And so I must do Scrum when I can't possibly do it
> right because I am on a team that is not cross-functional and not interested
> in each others' stories. How can something so strict be called agile?
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