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So the company decided to go agile. I am now a scrum master. And we have the local product owners and all. They made us do daily stand-ups.

I don't know what is a scrum master. Nobody knows what the hell is a stand-up. It seems to be an akward 30 minutes every day, when local product owner asks questions and demands status reports.

I did some googling and it seems that the scrum master is supposed to just support the team and solve problems. In our version the scrum master finds out the system architecture and requirements, fills the backlog, does the system design and reports to the project manager(s). Also reports to the clients about the general project status in an executive meetings. I also do the sprint planning, in which we fit the vague features that we are told into time tables with ready told dates.

Oh yeah, the team is just 2 guys. One of them is me. And the other guy relies completely on me to daily tell what to do, review the work and also answer all the project and company level questions that pop into his mind. He gets angry if he doesn't receive ready-thought solutions to all problems, since "you're the boss and it's your job to tell us what to do".

This is going to be a great year.

Comments
  • 1
    Full disclosure: I hate scrum. However, even I would say that the management/decision makers in your company who have told you to do these things are completely clueless. They apparently are fine with implementing new processes that they don't understand at all, which makes me think they not only don't understand your problems but would probably just put into place and old thing given the right pitch.
  • 0
    Sounds like you're scrum master and project manager. The PM should be the one populating the backlog. Standup should just be the dev team. Everyone says what they did yesterday and what they plan on doing today and lets the scrum master know about blockers so he can solve them.
  • 0
    Agile in name only.
    stop doing the standups, ules they are really funny.
    get some qa into the team, and ffs, get a PM with you.

    Also - good luck!
  • 0
    Actually, the concept of a "sprint" was kind of cool. I though that ok, now we get to choose some tasks and get uninterrupted peace to finish them.

    But, here's the deal: when I release something, it goes to higher level integration, verification and lab. And in any given moment they can have an issue. So they call me. I need to stop everything and start debugging. Also at the any given moment, someone from the requirement guys or algorith guys can want to have a conf call or spec review.

    So, basically my day is a bunch of 15min work spurts followed by 30-45min of multiple chats and phone calls. Unless the other guy of our team materializes next to me, unhappy and full of angst, complaints and demands of clear written documentation of what to do.
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