Talk:Scrum (software development)

Biased

I am missing a criticisms section.

E.g., why isn't Scrum But (may or may not to be the same as the party line "ScrumBut") and Dark Scrum described here?

--Mortense (talk) 14:52, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

See discussion just above. --A D Monroe III^(talk) 02:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

That blog isn't a reliable source. Jeffries blog isn't much more notable. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:45, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Psiĥedelisto's review

Do these platitudes help the reader to understand the company?

~ Rhetorical question @ WP:MISSION

As requested by Walter Görlitz, I'm backing up each tag I added. Consider this something of an ad hoc WP:PR, I suppose... Despite being a computer programmer by profession, my job really has never put me on a collision course with this concept before. I've worked solo since 2018, on individual contracts for individual features to add to, or bugs to fix in, free software, mostly to FontForge. Before that, when I still worked in the normal commercial/proprietary software "industry", agile software development was still all the rage. But enough about me...

Note, I have a dry style of writing. I'm trying to help the three paid editors, and any other contributors, see what's wrong with this article; sometimes I feel the best way to do this is by being straightforward and sometimes telling sarcastic jokes. You've been warned. A good friend asked me to look at this article and to give my opinion on its quality, which resulted in my initial tagging.

MOS:PUFF / WP:MISSION

Not my tag, but I agree with it. This article is riddled with language that says a whole lot of nothing. That might be OK for the Scrum website, but not for an encyclopedia. A particularly egregious example from § Limitations:

From a business perspective, Scrum has many virtues, one of which is that it is designed to yield the best business solutions.

Isn't every approach to managing software developers "designed" to yield the "best business solutions"? Why would anyone "design" an approach to managing software developers that's meant to yield subpar "business solutions"? What even is a "business solution"; I assume it's anything that solves a "business problem", so what kind of business problem are we talking about here? It's no accident that {{solution-inline}} redirects to {{buzzword inline}}. It is also completely out-WP:NPOV to write an unqualified Scrum has many virtues in any context whatsoever. If Scrum has many virtues, I also think I have many virtues, and I'd like my Wikipedia page upgraded to reflect that. Preferably if we can put it in the most negative section as well, as here, that would be ideal.

MOS:LEAD

I tagged {{Lead rewrite}} because that's what's needed. The lead is not following the most important parts of MOS:LEAD; no part of the lead would be in this article if it were WP:FA-class. The lead in this article is not an "overview". Again, more MOS:PUFF: advanced technologies; complex products. These phrases do nothing to enlighten readers. Complex compared to what? Advanced compared to what?

As a quite note, sprint retrospective to continuously improve makes absolutely no sense, and I can't WP:SOFIXIT because I have no idea what is meant. Sprint retrospectively, perhaps? That also makes no sense, at least with how I understand the word sprint.

As I'll discuss later, the inline cites in the lead are also unsuited for inclusion.

WP:FANPOV

§ Key ideas just compounds problems in the lead and other sections, and starts crossing from MOS:PUFF and into WP:FANPOV. [Scrum] challenges assumptions of the traditional, sequential approach to product development... How? Also, there will be unpredictable challenges—for which a predictive or planned approach is not suited; but then we have the entire §§ Workflow and Roles, which detail in exhaustive (and exhausting) detail exactly how every little part of the Scrum system is, indeed, planned out and predictable. Is there anything less predictable than a daily fifteen minute meeting?

From § Roles, we get this role is crucial about the "product owner", who uses Scrum’s empirical tools to manage highly complex work, while controlling risk and achieving value, so presumably, no other management style can do this, because they don't have "the empirical tools" (they lack the spiritual technology, perhaps?). It's very obvious that the article is already deciding, in WP:WIKIVOICE, that Scrum is the best, and everything else is just backstory.

Another thing I'm not impressed by is the continuous use of the word traditional to talk about other practices. This is more WP:FANPOV—we, the Scrum masters of the universe, are the enlightened, and everyone else is stuck in burdensome "traditions". This is especially visible in the sentence Scrum does not formally recognise the role of project manager, as traditional command and control tendencies would cause difficulties, which doesn't actually mean anything, but could, perhaps with better sources, start approaching some actual meaningful statement about Scrum governance. Right now it sounds like no one in charge. Is Scrum an anarchy? A new character is introduced very late into the article, at § Cancelling a sprint, the mysterious character of management. Of course, capitalism exists, and our allergy to this term could not have been expected to continue indefinitely. Have we indeed just renamed the project manager a scrum master and sprinkled some MOS:PUFF on top?

WP:V / WP:RS

Our regularly scheduled program is on hold while we go over some sources.

• Schwaber and Sutherland (2017) is WP:PRIMARY. It's being used inappropriately right in the lead. We ought to be able to find a WP:THIRDPARTY to back that up.
• I see no evidence Agile Alliance is WP:RS, though it may just be a quasi-RS as a trade rag of sorts.
• DZone is WP:UGC and must be removed.
• StackOverflow is WP:UGC and must be removed.
• Schwaber's bio on Scrum.org is WP:PRIMARY and has no capitalized title; source has either changed or never said what it's meant to.
• There is no reason to believe "Agile Learning Labs", Johnson (2011), is an WP:RS. This is just someone's blog.
• Schwaber (2004), Microsoft Press, despite the imprint, is still WP:PRIMARY due to its author; however, I don't think any use of it in the current text is inappropriate.
• Schwaber (2004), Advanced Development Methods, more WP:PRIMARY.

• So we're using two primary sources to draw an inference no WP:RS makes about why people started capitalizing SCRUM sometimes. Probably not appropriate.

• Verheyen (2013), this guy at least has a serious WP:COI if he's not WP:PRIMARY himself. According to his bio:[1]

Gunther left consulting in 2013 to found Ullizee-Inc and partner exclusively with Ken Schwaber, Scrum co-creator. He represented Ken and the Scrum.org organization in Europe, shepherded the “Professional Scrum” series, and guided Scrum.org’s global network of Professional Scrum Trainers. Gunther is co-creator to Agility Path, EBM (Evidence-Based Management), and the Nexus framework for Scaled Professional Scrum.

This in my view is more than enough to make Verheyen WP:PRIMARY.

I see no reason to keep going so granular, those are the major issue sources, and any other source by either Schwaber, Sutherland or Verheyen.

Third-party sources need to start being prioritized; Deemer et al. (2012) looks like a place to start. The Addison-Wesley sources and the John Wiley & Sons sources also seem at first brush WP:RS to me where they weren't written by Schwaber, Sutherland, or Verheyen.

One last thing before we move on. There is significant confusion in my mind about what the difference between agile and Scrum actually is. We seem to be using sources about agile, such as Flewelling (2018), but also many others when I have no reason to believe that this is appropriate. A section on the difference, if there even is one besides terminology, (I remain skeptical.) is desperately needed.

Wrap-up / ping line

@Walter Görlitz: Thanks for the kick in the pants. Definitely learned something by doing this review: my day job is awesome! Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) 06:11, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I agreed with these. Your first round was overkill. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:05, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

@Walter Görlitz: After sleeping on it, I think the best solution is to merge this article into the agile article. However, you've been contributing to it since before I joined Wikipedia. So, what's your thought on a WP:PM? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) 20:45, 29 May 2020 (UTC) (please ping me!)

I think there's enough here for a stand-alone article. It's not unlike the Kanban (development) article although the documentation there is better. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:02, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Definition of "Done" is included in The Scrum Guide, not an extension

While most tools & techniques have been removed from The Scrum Guide over the years, Definition of "Done" is not one of them. It is an intrinsic part of Scrum: without the DoD the idea of the "potentially releasable increment" cannot be sustained. Even if DoD is a verbal agreement or a per se. If an increment is not expected to be released, the transparency of the product development process would be still impacted by the removal of DoD. In contrast, the Definition of "Ready" is not a mandatory part of Scrum, just an arbitrary technique to mark product backlog items whether they are good enough for sprint planning. So that is rightfully listed as an extension. I suggest moving Definition of "Done" from the Extensions section to a subsection of Increment, where it belongs to. --Agile-enthusiast (talk) 03:02, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

If it's part of the guide, then I agree. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:20, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

SCRUM vs Scrum

The article mentions that it is occasionally written SCRUM, and the source it cites is a post on StackOverflow asserting that they have seen people do that. In that same post, they are corrected and explained that it should be written Scrum. I think it would be better to treat SCRUM as simply a misspelling, and there's no need to call out that sometimes people misspell it in this particular way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.62.98.178 (talk) 18:10, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Scrum Guide 2020

I made some updates in line with the latest version of the Guide. Mainly removing references to development team and the assumption that the backlog will be estimated. Oradium (talk) 18:16, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

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