Ah-gee-lay ... it must be Italian! 

Like all things that become the standard, agile[1]/scrum is seeing a bit of a backlash. I just happened across a couple of interesting posts that lay out interesting arguments against the new standards.

First, a long article from OK I Give Up:

This is actually my biggest gripe about Scrum. As mentioned above, in Scrum, the gods of story points per sprint reign supreme. For anything that doesn’t bring in points, you need to get the permission of the product owner or scrum master or someone who has a say over them. Refactoring, reading code, researching a topic in detail are all seen as “not working on actual story points, which is what you are paid to do”. Specialization is frowned upon. Whatever technology you develop or introduce, you are not allowed to become an expert at it, because it is finishing a story that brings the points, not getting the gist of a technology or mastering an idea. These are all manifestations of the control mania of Scrum.

I do think there is something nefarious to the godliness of points in the Scrum process (and the immediate, inarguable counter-argument that if it isn’t working for you, you’re doing it wrong).

Put in a slightly more graphical way:

Tasks

(Hilarious image from RobBomb)


  1. “Ah-gee-lay” – if you don’t get the reference, check out this video:  ↩