Agile and Scrum have some good things going for them.
They teach developers that building things is always an iterative process. A well designed product will still require incremental on-the-fly improvements to get it right just as code does. Sometimes a design will require a refactor just as code does. Needing a 'complete' design doc before building a product is a fallacy.
They teach project managers that if they just let the designers and developers get on with it they can usually self-organise and manage their time better than if done top-down by a non-technical outsider.
They teach producers and 'product owners' that constant interference can be detrimental to a production process. Developers should be allowed to develop.
Best of all if done right they allow everyone scope to make mistakes yet still fix them and good mistakes that they can try out and keep.
However, there are downsides: scrum has no role for designers in the day-to-day production. Either they are pushed to the role of product manager or they have to work independently a sprint ahead. An ideal system would put the designers into the heart of the scrum team.
Top-down scrum is where it all goes badly wrong: producers and managers insisting that designs are complete before a line of code is created, managers taking the role of scrum-master, sprints being nothing more than waterfall milestones etc.
They teach developers that building things is always an iterative process. A well designed product will still require incremental on-the-fly improvements to get it right just as code does. Sometimes a design will require a refactor just as code does. Needing a 'complete' design doc before building a product is a fallacy.
They teach project managers that if they just let the designers and developers get on with it they can usually self-organise and manage their time better than if done top-down by a non-technical outsider.
They teach producers and 'product owners' that constant interference can be detrimental to a production process. Developers should be allowed to develop.
Best of all if done right they allow everyone scope to make mistakes yet still fix them and good mistakes that they can try out and keep.
However, there are downsides: scrum has no role for designers in the day-to-day production. Either they are pushed to the role of product manager or they have to work independently a sprint ahead. An ideal system would put the designers into the heart of the scrum team.
Top-down scrum is where it all goes badly wrong: producers and managers insisting that designs are complete before a line of code is created, managers taking the role of scrum-master, sprints being nothing more than waterfall milestones etc.