Jobs at Kobo

[pholy]

I've not worked in an Agile environment, but I suspect that transitioning from any of the older development models to Agile will be as easy as moving from procedural programming techniques to object oriented programming techniques -- ranging from not very easy to damn near impossible. In may only really happen in a new company like Kobo, probably never in an 50 year old infrastructure engineering firm like the one where I spent the last four years. I'd really like to be able to observe it in action from the sidelines, but I don't think anybody will pay me to do that.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by 3d0g

We'll have to agree to disagree then HamsterRage.

When we went Agile, the PMs were sent to scrum training and presto - they became the scrums. Their job is 90% the same it always was: keeping meetings (now standups) on track, removing impediments, revising schedule changes, etc.

Well, meetings don't just become stand-ups. The daily Scrum is a very specific type of meeting designed to keep the Team updated with each others' progress. In so much as that meeting has a very specific structure, the SM keeps it "on track". Other than that, it's up to the Team to keep any other meetings they decide to have on track.

I'd have to say, if your organization transitioned to Scrum and it feels like the "same old, same old" but with new names for stuff -- well then you're doing it wrong. Way wrong. Scrum is profoundly different from other forms of project management.

[3d0g]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

I'd have to say, if your organization transitioned to Scrum and it feels like the "same old, same old" but with new names for stuff -- well then you're doing it wrong. Way wrong. Scrum is profoundly different from other forms of project management.

I'm sure some would argue we are "doing it wrong". OTOH, our prior PM process was very regimented compared to most companies so perhaps that's why the transition wasn't so extreme to us. With 50K employees and 25M customers, we're not exactly new to this rodeo.

Honestly, the real value in Agile is the daily expectation to deliver put on the devs. Scrums bring little "revolutionary" to the table via the Agile process IMO.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by 3d0g

I'm sure some would argue we are "doing it wrong". OTOH, our prior PM process was very regimented compared to most companies so perhaps that's why the transition wasn't so extreme to us. With 50K employees and 25M customers, we're not exactly new to this rodeo.

Honestly, the real value in Agile is the daily expectation to deliver put on the devs. Scrums bring little "revolutionary" to the table via the Agile process IMO.

From what I've heard, big companies with entrenched heavyweight waterfall PM practices have a much harder time getting into the Agile/Scrum way of doing things.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I still have to say that if you're doing Scrum and it feels like the same-old, same-old but just with a new name, then you're probably not doing it right.