Scrum as a Form of Torture

A satirical Agile bashing story

Did you hear about the new form of torture they are using in some political prisons? They call it Scrum or Agile and are delighted with its effects. They use these two terms interchangeably (I have no idea what these terms mean or how they relate to each other).

The Scrum Master lurks in their corner office late at night, cackling demonically, but tries to get home in time to tuck in the kids. Photo by Árpád Czapp on Unsplash

First, they teach prisoners how to write computer code, to program, with a promise of better conditions if they get good at it. The naive ones who fall for it are in for a surprise. Once prisoners learn how to code they start them on a project and tell them that they will use “Scrum” to manage the project. According to this “Scrum”, the development is organized around these so-called “Sprints”, at the beginning of each “Sprint”, they play this game called Planning Poker. The guards ask prisoners to estimate each development task, prisoners of course reply that it is impossible to estimate such tasks because they don’t really have enough experience developing this type of software, the technology stack is constantly changing, there are configuration issues, bugs with third-party software, dependencies on another part of the system which is under development and continually in its own state of flux. The list of potential problems is endless. There are simply too many unknowns to be able to estimate.

The guards smile and assure them that they are aware of all this and understand that this is only an estimate. They comfort prisoners by saying “it doesn’t matter if you get it wrong”, “we will understand”, “it's only an estimate”, “of course you can’t know in advance how long it will take”. (They are indoctrinated in this diabolic technique at the infamous Scrum Master Training Camp).

Prisoners eventually give up and start to estimate. Planning poker is done as a group so there is a certain amount of peer pressure, nobody wants to overestimate, it would make them look stupid. In addition, there is no time to really design the solution, or conduct real investigations, or create a prototype to get a real feel for how long it may take. It is, after all, poker, gambling (it would not be a gamble if you could really predict — but this is Rushin’ Roulette).

Then prisoners pick up a task each and start coding. Typically, the sprint is set up to end in two to three weeks. The main point is to have a deadline, which puts prisoners under pressure. The main source of stress is the fact that they will have to present the working solution in front of everybody (yes not just the team, but the whole cell block, and sometimes the whole prison camp).

Lionel the Coding-Kitten was full of hope and enthusiasm at the start of the project, but now he is imprisoned by unusable code that might look good on the day but will serve no later purr-pose. Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

As the end of the sprint approaches the prisoners start to turn against each other, everyone stressing and racing to finish their task so they can present their own part. The guards are instructed to expand this rift by ordering them to cooperate, announcing that team spirit is all-important, knowing well that each prisoner has been forced to commit to finishing their own task. They pretend to support prisoners whilst hurrying them up in their best Scrum-Master-General™ passive-aggressive manner. They smile seriously (and with a touch of concern) and ask “so how are you doing?” and “will you finish in time?” (All guards are issued with secret timers set to remind them to ask this at preset intervals).

As the clock ticks on, the guards will begin to stress that the task you are working on is your task, thus identifying a person with a task, the task becomes a person and the person becomes a task, failure to finish a task is a personal failure. But it is too late now, you are trapped.

With every iteration of the wheel Poko the hacking hamster feels the interminable pointlessness of being. He will never get the cheese (or even a crispy crouton). Photo by Jie Wang on Unsplash

This so-called Scrum technique has proven very effective, prisoners who would never previously have informed on their comrades crack and turn against their fellow inmates, typically on the last day of the sprint. Important intel information can be gathered this way. What was once a cohesive prisoner community, filled with camaraderie and discussions about football, has now been broken by this Agile Scrum technique.

And the project? Well, the prisoners only have themselves to blame.

Human rights activists are decrying this method as inhumane, and campaigning to stop the use of Scrum in prison camps.

If you think Scrum torture should stop then share this story and tweet #StopScrumTorture.