Why I'm not a big fan of Scrum
&gt; First of all, what are story points? Are they measures of time it takes to complete a story? If yes, then why are they not in terms of time? Are they measures of complexity?<p>Story points are a measure of &quot;relative amounts of effort&quot;. A 2 point story is twice as hard, as far as effort to implement it than a 1 point one.<p>&gt; Scrum meetings (aka rituals) have been among the most miserable hours of my life...<p>Would you rather have many meetings almost every day, or a single big ol&#x27; meeting every few weeks so you can focus on coding without interruptions?<p>&gt; The review meeting causes utterly unnecessary anxiety (Oh my god, will my feature work?)<p>It should not cause anxiety because it MUST work. The review meeting is to show stakeholders a &quot;potentially shippable product increment&quot;. Everything you show on the review meeting should have been extensively tested already.<p>&gt; Why estimate stories that you are going to break down anyway?<p>You only break down stories if they are too big. You are not supposed to work every detail on a planning meeting.<p>&gt; but in Scrum, the retro is explicitly supposed to be about the Scrum process itself, not about the codebase<p>The retro is not about the scrum process but about how it is working for the team. All these issues you have already complained about should be reserved for this meeting where the whole team can decide which adjustments to make.<p>&gt; The main goal of Scrum is to minimize risk and make sure the developers do not deviate from the plan. I will come back to &quot;Scrum controlmania&quot; later.<p>It is regretful that, like all the other &quot;why scrum sucks&quot; posts I&#x27;ve seen on HN, it all boils down to a bad scrummaster not managing expectations and taking the time to explain where the process really comes from.