Sad Developer Diaries Stories from the SCRUM (PDF)

Sad Developer
Diaries
Stories From the SCRUM

Any resemblance or
difference to actual
events or persons is
completely
incidental

Dear Diary,
We are going to use SCRUM in our project from now on. I have no idea what it
means, but sounds a lot like scram, scam and scum. Neither or which sounds
reassuring.
I hope we won’t all get fired or forced to cooperate in fraudulent activities.

Dear Diary,
Today the Product Owner introduced a ticket for a new feature. The story is
written in a tree like structure with several subtasks and substories per level, and
is approximately 5 levels deep.
I asked if am I supposed to read the story in depth first or breadth first fashion.
He said that the feature should be green.
I suppose I should go search for some green paint.
I wonder should I tell him that I am color blind?

Dear Diary,
Yesterday while rating a ticket I got distracted, and didn’t understand what the
ticket was about so I gave very high rating. After it turned out it’s a simple change,
instead of backing down I bluffed and called out the lower rating. One more hour
of heated discussion and we ended up with rating 20 for adding a translation
string.
I like the rating system, it’s almost like poker but instead of losing money you win
respect.

Dear Diary,
I was very excited about the today’s retro meeting since it was my first one. I was
expecting chocolate cake, soft music from the 90s and sharing memories about
the good old times.
Turned out it was a regular meeting where everybody complained about random
things.
I complained about the lack of chocolate cake and music.
I hope I get them next time.

Dear Diary,
During refinement today, we were refining an old ticket. This is the 12th time we
are refining this ticket and it still is not good enough.
I wonder whether the ticket is being refined so we accept it or we are being
refined until we accept it.
I guess it’s a bit of both.

Dear Diary,
Our dearest SCRUM master is out of office today and I miss him. After the
standup I was thinking about what are we without our dearest SCRUM master?
Are we mere SCRUM slaves?
I am sad.

Dear Diary,
We had retro meeting again today. I was first this time, so I asked why is it called
retro when there is nothing retro about it. It turned out that it’s not retro but
retrospective.
Out of curiosity then I asked if there is a such thing as retro of retros, and after
some discussion the meeting turned into retro of retros instead of the regular
one.
I should have asked about the chocolate cake.

Dear Diary,
I think I am starting to get a grasp on SCRUM. Three weeks ago Product Owner
asked for some small change that doesn’t fit out regular workflow.
I told him that there is no process defined for it, so we agreed we should first
define a process before implementing the change.
We tried to make a meeting about it several times, but it’s hard to find matching
time slots.
I think 1 more week and he will completely forget about it.