Stop doing Scrum! at PHPBenelux
I’m afraid I’m gonna state the obvious here, but have you ever been to an 11 years old community conference? PHPBenelux made it so far, and guess what? It was AWESOME! Thanks to the organizers and to Tideways (for the unconference).
I do think my feelings about the event is now clear to you… I could carry on for ages and go over every talks I liked, but that would get quite lengthy! I just want to share with you a very interesting talk and subject from Jeroen de Jong, who spoke first thing in the morning on the second day of conference, in the unconference track (hence the sticker on his badge)!
Stop doing Scrum!
What a catchy title! I won’t go on an off about it, but short version: Don't try to force Scrum (or any Agile methodology) on a team!. How boring will you argue! And you’d be right… Unless the speaker delivers it perfectly, in an experienced based talk!
I’d love to see this conference again with a larger crowd as we were only a few, but the collaborative approach using smartphones to generate cloud tags allows everyone to chip in with it’s own view and experiences.
I won’t spoil the talk for you (I already know Jeroen de Jong submitted to ScotlandPHP at least, CFP still opened), but you may ask him the slides directly if you want to!
My main takeaway as previously stated is that one should never try to force an approach but should drive the change by letting the workers do their work, and let them face the exact same issues that may have led to defining such frameworks (as the Scrum one). This also may apply to other domains, such as code 😃
Discussing further, he explained a strategy where he removed all rituals and estimations, and then went from there. As a confused proponent of the estimation-less movement, I am both for and against that strategy, but more than that, I have never been able to sell it to my clients on projects that weren’t critical legacy where they basically had no other choices.
I really loved the discussion and how transparent on these issues Jeroen has been.
For once, I’d love to use the article comments to keep the discussion going (or my own twitter feed if that’s more your jam!). I’m actually really passionate on this topic as my current job seems to be split between digging deeper in saving projects on a tech point of view and saving projects on a human/organization point of view 😨 I’m waiting for your thoughts just down below 👇!
