'Scrum' Agile project management when depressed/anxious.

[neufena]

I don't know if anyone else here has ever worked in an 'Agile' environment. I changed job at the start year to a company that follows the 'Scrum'method strictly. I've worked in places that have tried bits of it but this is the first time I've worked in a strict environment like this. While there're many things I like about it I'm finding one area really hard, the daily 'scrum' meeting. This is a 15 min meeting first thing each morning where everybody says what they did yesterday, what they are going to do today and if they have any impediments to their work. It's really hard being judged on your output on a daily basis. Nobody likes review meetings or being asked to justify their work but doing it every day seems really hard to me. I'm just waiting for the day someone says "is that ALL? Clear your desk, you're fired."

[HowDidIGetHere]

Sounds like a pretty fair picture of hell. I don't think working while depressed is fun under any circumstances, but that sounds extra rough.

[neufena]

I think that I dislike it because of my depression/anxiety. It's meant to be an exercise on sharing information and knowing what everyone is up to so we can work together but I'm really scared of not having done enough the previous day.

[oak]

As I see it, and I may be wrong, is that work, like any other routine, is a daily farce that is so much performance art.

Example: what happened the last time you went to the grocery store? It is a heuristic, a schema, a play. To make everything easier for everybody.

Now, the reason they have scrum/agile/tqm/deming/iso9000/ad nauseum is so that someone can put it on their resume. Our working lives are in the pursuit of somebody's resume bullet point. We, and our contributions at the morning meeting, mean nothing.

Though our roles in this farce are meaningless, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't play our jester roles well. In fact, I posit we should, since it is less work.

We'll be exploited whatever happens, so we may as well get as much reward for as little actual effort. Notice I didn't say "actual work", we should work, but for the minimum effort.

Here's what I suggest:

Observe the toadies/lackeys/flunkies/minions who get the most praise for the least amount of effort at these meetings. Chances are they do exactly the right work, the very work most valued by management.

Do likewise, and act all intense about these meeting debacles. Find out what management wants, and then be real ostentatious about your completed meager goals.

Above all, I advise flying under the radar at work. Be just competent enough to not get fired, but not such a go-getter that they give you more work without more pay.

(And trust me, I've done both too little and too much at work.)