The current project at the day job has been one of the longest exposures to the concept of scrums and sprints that exist as part of the "agile" development methodology. The basic premise of the scrum is to organise a development process that allows a team to move through the different project cycles faster in a predictable manner. However, my experience with scrum at the day job and with some clients over the years has often shown this to be an occasional side effect of the methodology rather than the rule. Does scrum incentivise the right behaviours? Does it actually lead to better development? Or is this just another distraction that replaces actual development time and team building with the micromanagement of little squares on Jira?
In this longer-than-necessary episode, I examine some of the pitfalls that I've experienced with scrum and "modern agile" development over the years and how this has often resulted in "worse" code.