this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
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On that subject, does anybody hate the term "Sprint" as much as I do?
"Sprints" are extremely quick events that last tens of seconds and are done at most once a day, but more often (in competition) a few times a month, or a few times in a day every few months.
You don't sprint for a full week every week. That's a marathon, maybe an ultra-marathon.
The theory being that the team rushes to complete the prioritised items. Also in theory if you close all items before end of the sprint, you are free to not work, or work on pet project at your own pace.
Of course middle management hates the idea of others being idle so they asked to squeeze the last part. Efficiency, baby !
Sure, it might seem like a sprint compared to a Waterfall project where it's a marathon, where there might be months between points where you check in with the plan and try to figure out if the software is ready to ship yet.
I still just object to the word "sprint". Any job where you're sprinting over and over, week after week, where that's the main thing you're doing, you're doing something wrong.
We had a bunch of simultaneous 'sprints' that went on for over a year...
What makes it so annoying to me is that a sprint implies putting in maximum effort for a short time. The pace of a sprint is unsustainable over more than a few seconds.
If you say you did "sprints" for over a year... no you didn't. Either you sprinted for a little bit and then had to walk for a while because you'd used up all your energy. Or, you jogged at a sustainable pace for a year and just called it a sprint.
Oh absolutely. It wasn't even close to being sparkling chaos, let alone Agile. What we had as 'sprints' would be more accurate as Epics. The whole thing was insane but they stuck with the terminology...
ah-jee-lay… must be Italian!
Screenshotting a text post on the Fediverse, to post an opaque image on the Fediverse.
The post was right there to be shared.
Ok, but could one cross post a mastodon toot to lemmy?
If you tag a lemmy community in a mastodon toot it posts to the community.
Dunno if there's a way to repost other people's toots to lemmy though, never tried
Tag it how?
Same way you'd tag a user on lemmy, just tagging the community instead.
@community@instance.url
I've never tried it myself, but I've seen it been done a couple times
Hmm, does the other direction work? @merc@techhub.social wants to know. (That's me).
Good question, did it?
Yeah, it worked.
It works, and I think I can reply to the thread via Mastodon. But, I don't get the full thread, just one post back in the thread.
I guess mastodon only fetches up one level in a thread then, still neat
You forgot "We use JIRA so we are agile now. I assigned all tickets so get to work and be done at the end of the ~~week~~ sprint"
The one I like is “we have no fucking idea what we’re trying to build other than a vague problem statement, so start testing already. This is Agile.”
”Our plan is to continuously make up new shit along the way and hope we eventually get something we can deliver”
From experience most hate from project management systems come from people just don't understand it and implement it poorly. Usually the miss the point. Unfortunately those are the people who need the structure the most.
The 'hate' is the obvious observation that most forms of project management do and can not work while they are done over and over again with the non-argument 'If it does not work, you are not doing it right'.
i fucking hate daily standups. such a pointless waste of time.
For you perhaps but for the scrum master it helps identify whether the sprint is on track and whether there are any new discoveries/realities identified during the previous days work that might impact the Sprint's goals.
This is fundamental to the emperical nature of scrum: there is no improvement without inspection.
Especially when they're called "standups" but everybody sits down because they typically last an hour or so.
Yet another way that the good ideas from Agile got crushed to meaninglessness by Business Idiocy.
The whole point of the “stand up meeting” is, by forcing everyone to stand together, to encourage everyone to keep it brief and to the point, so it benefits everyone without sucking their time.
Of course, that works only when everyone's in the same room. I don't have a good replacement for teams that connect remotely.
We have a NeatBoard that's configured for Zoom. So our stand ups are in front of this TV thing and it works well for us.
Then again, our stand ups are short and to the point. We're closer to kanban than scrum.
I did have actual stand ups once, after coming back from China and all I could think of was "shit I hope they don't make us sing the corp's anthem at the end!" like they do over there...
Wait, do they seriously have corporate anthems in China? I thought that only happened in the sprawl trilogy o.O
Please explain this corporate anthem further....
Kind of like what they do at Walmart?
“Well, to get people to consider if our method is potentially applicable to their situation and needs, we need to give it descriptive names that sound dynamic and cool to get their attention. If it’s not right for their needs they’ll disregard it of course.”
The business idiots: “Hmmm, yes, fancy words, trendy, apply it immediately to everything so I can say I “over saw implementation” on my resume next time I hop jobs”
It's agile if the plan is constantly reviewed with every new information in mind and you can change what you are working in to better implement it.
If you do do Scrum, that's almost never the case.
I had the misfortune of working under SAFE – Scalee agile or something. It was waterfall wearing a festive and extremely expensive Agile mask.
I think more than 60 devs all working in the same codebase, a trading platform, and doing planning sprints individually, playing planning poker to estimate feature of features of features up to three months in the future. Most ridiculous thing I ever participated in and that says a lot.
I'm not super fond of SAFE either
waterfall wearing a festive and extremely expensive Agile mask.
Is exactly the experience I had in my last two shops.
Is there such a thing as a region called Agile in france? Or am i missing out the point of the joke?
It's a meme format (a snowclone), of the form "It's only X if it comes from the X region of France, otherwise it's just sparking Y". The original was talking about Champagne (and sparkling wine), which is why it's France.
There's lots of versions out there, of varying quality.
I think the "region of France" section is optional. As long as it has the punchline "otherwise it's just sparkling" Y
I guess it is a reference to champagne. If wine does not come from the region "Champagne" it is not allowed to be called Champagne but just white wine. Even if it tastes just the same.
just white wine
Come on you're going to hurt the wine snobs with this statement. Champagne is a sparkling wine, it doesn't taste like any white wine. It's more like a bitter Sprite with alcohol in it.
Same with Cognac and Armagnac. And Port. And probably a bunch of others.
Oooh ok thx a lot!
So that's Agile AOP then.