Technical term for a brain dead management technique?

[Zippy]

I see, "The Daily Standup". This maybe a modification to it then, as the couple or three managers go around the table and berate each programmers in a bad cop, worse cop, downright nasty cop kinda way, the programmers are made to feel bad, female staff made to cry etc. then each programmer is coerced into agreeing to perform some unreasonable task before the next meeting.

Ah, I see where this Scrum thingy is going wrong now.
The bad,worse and nasty cops should be scuttling off to fix the issues which meant the programmers couldn't complete the task. The programmers need to stick up for themselves (I know - easier said than done)

[VectraMan]

I had one client that did "the daily standup". I thought it was quite good: it gave everybody a chance to get to know each other and know what everybody was up to in general, and not sit in their own little world. Plus it helped highlight how pointless PMs are by keeping them out of the loop.

I don't care about BS methodologies, but that's something I liked and if I ever get to run a software team again might well implement.

[realityhack]

I did

ineffectiveness is the oppostite of effectiveness. measure one and you have the other.
I just asumed that RH was a glass half empty kinda guy

Absolutely - and WthunderlizardS - Scrum is the Agile method that appears to be described here. Ineffectiveness would be tackled by these regular meetings. Sometimes successfully.

And CJ - I hit the bar way before anyone else is half-empty.

[swamp]

Daily stand-ups are good and keep everyone motivated and focussed, and any blockers can go straight to the PMs.

However the blame culture that the OP described is just going to encourage people to big themselves up to avoid looking bad. Split a task into lots of small ones and complete one or more a day, and you'll look like you're overachieving. Plenty of developers are too modest and say things aren't that difficult, when in fact they are quite tricky.

[minestrone]

Why can't you just tell the PM when you get the blocker, one phrase I hear constantly is "I think I will bring that up at the scrum" Why not bring it up there and then? I think it brings a "I'll do that tomorrow" mentality to the team.

[thunderlizard]

Scrum has its good points, more as a reporting framework than a methd for getting things done. But it's supposed to be more about hearing peoples problems so you can sort them out, than about making them cry.

[Svalbaard]

"Scrum and agile bollocks" I call it - peddling this sort of crap keeps management consultants and authors in work.

It is a derivative of a technique that successful project managers use called "walking the floor". It's not a very difficult technique to learn, but central to it is the ability to listen with two ears, and to speak in a clear voice.

It's amazing how many people fail to identify or grasp the importance of the technique, but then it's not taught in any PRINCE2 manual, and is not part of any client governance process that I have seen.

[minestrone]

I read a good article a few years a go that claimed that agile stopped being a way of writing software and became a commodity to sell training courses years ago. I thikn that is totally true.

It seems to be more in use in bigger organisations where the skill level is lower. Banks and the like. I find if you have skilled people constantly communicating through the day then there is no need for it.

Anyway here is a funny article from the bileblog ( Language potentially NSFW ).

[Zippy]

Why can't you just tell the PM when you get the blocker, one phrase I hear constantly is "I think I will bring that up at the scrum" Why not bring it up there and then? I think it brings a "I'll do that tomorrow" mentality to the team.

You can, and you should. One of the benefits I found with Scrum was a sense of shared responsibility between developers, PMs and customers. Also making the burn-down chart and task list visible to everyone helps prevent the "have you done it yet" syndrome. If you are a crap dev or PM, Scrum won't help you.

[sunnysan]

Agile/Scrum

The problem with waterfall and process heavy methodologies is that peoples cluelessness and carapness can be hidden by process.

The adv of Scrum/Agile is that it becomes clear very early on in a project who knows what they are doing.

If the organisation has a culture of teamwork, mentoring and skills definciency managment then it works quite well, but if the company is full of bombastic, dour techies with inferiority complexes, failed developers who have been moved to mgt before they get fired in the next round of redundancies, or evangelical process hounds who are taken in by every management book with a catchy title to cover up their own lack of ability to grasp the basics of managing people, it won't work, ergo it doesnt really work in many places.