Comments by "Mentat" (@_Mentat) on "Continuous Delivery" channel.

@davetoms1 I scored 98% on the Scrum Alliance certification test. I know my stuff. And Archi is correct, no release forecasting is possible in Agile because every two weeks the stakeholders are invited to change the direction. Also Dave, why don't you answer my questions above: what do QA and Doc do while Devs are coding? At the moment our QA is idle for the first week because there's nothing to test, and the Devs are idle for the second week because QA wouldn't have time to test it if they did code something. Scrum is a productivity killer.
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@davetoms1 So, again, no real answer. Yes we use automation and advanced development tools. But the simple fact is that no matter how high the productivity the methodology keeps people idle when they could be working under a different methodology. And no, QAs cannot write code. Our devs have advanced degrees and decades of relevant experience. Saying to a QA, nothing to test atm so write some code would be absurd. They wouldn't know where to begin. Likewise the tech writers. The root of the problem is dividing everything into teams, sprints and stories and only doing what can be completed in a sprint. Whoever invented that was mad.
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@archi-mendel You accused me of having "little understanding of Agile and Scrum". I stated my certification to show I had plenty of knowledge and understanding. It was only to refute your allegation that I mentioned my certification, not because I measure myself or others on certificates alone, or even at all really.
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@davetoms1 It's understandable that you leave without having provided an answer, because there is no answer. Even the instructor on my course had no answer; it's a fundamental flaw in Scrum.
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@archi-mendel I was simply refuting that our use of Agile/Scrum is not successful due to a lack of understanding on my part. Scrum doesn't work because it is intrinsically flawed. I don't keep saying "Even my instructors...". I once said "Even the instructor...". He may or may not not have been smart, it's irrelevant, but he was qualified as an instructor, and he could not answer the question I put to Dave Toms above.
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@archi-mendel Qualified means has a qualification.
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@archi-mendel The certifying authority is the Scrum Alliance. And I am not a Scrum Master. I am qualified as a Scrum Master but I do not perform that role. I am a developer specializing in back-end and low-level code such as device drivers. I was offered a Scrum Master position but since I could see Scrum does not work, I declined.
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Agree. Agile/scrum has ruined many companies. Agile might be OK by itself, but sprints/stories/reviews will never end well.
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@ContinuousDelivery It sounds good, but from my personal experience, the review meeting people lose interest after the first couple of meetings and give you zero feedback and there's no budget to fix anything that's wrong so you better get it right first time because it's not changing afterwards. Add in Scrum and you have QA waiting for Dev half the time and Dev waiting for QA the other half. If QA were allowed to work a sprint behind Dev it might work better, but no, every story has to be "done" in a single sprint. Any really lazy people reading? Apply for doc writer in a Scrum team. It's about two hours work a fortnight and you're not allowed to pull forward any future work or slope off to another team the rest of the time. I'm a qualified Scrum Master, btw.
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