Meetings Then vs. Now: From Boardrooms to Arts and Crafts
Description
A two-panel meme contrasting meeting styles. The top panel features a black-and-white still image from the 1957 film '12 Angry Men,' depicting a group of serious, formally dressed men engaged in an intense discussion around a large table in a jury room. Overlaid white text reads, 'Meetings before Scrum was invented'. The bottom panel shows a vibrant, modern color photograph of three happy children - two girls and a boy - sitting at a bright yellow table, joyfully painting eggs with colorful paints and brushes. Overlaid text in a playful, bubbly pink font reads, 'MEETINGS NOW'. The meme humorously critiques the perceived shift in meeting culture with the adoption of Agile and Scrum methodologies. It juxtaposes the grim formality of traditional corporate meetings with modern agile ceremonies, which can sometimes involve more collaborative, creative, and seemingly childish activities like using colorful sticky notes, drawing, or dot-voting. For experienced developers, this resonates as a satirical commentary on how some agile practices, while intended to foster creativity, can feel patronizing or like a departure from serious, focused work
Comments
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Before Scrum, we had meetings to make binding decisions. Now, we have meetings to decide which color sticky note best represents a story point
Scrum didn’t kill the three-hour board meeting - it just refactored it into eight ceremonies where we argue whether repainting the same egg is a 2-point refactor or a net-new feature
The real irony is that we replaced one 2-hour meeting per week with daily standups, sprint planning, backlog grooming, retrospectives, and demos - effectively quintupling our meeting time while calling it 'agile'. At least the sticky notes are colorful
Ah yes, the golden age when 'sprint planning' meant running away from meetings, not scheduling four more. Back then, a 'standup' was what you did when the boss walked in, not a daily ceremony where everyone recites their Jira tickets like kindergarteners sharing show-and-tell. The irony? We invented Scrum to eliminate wasteful meetings, and somehow ended up with more ceremonies than a royal coronation - complete with story points, planning poker, and retrospectives where we discuss why we need so many retrospectives. At least the old guard got cigars and actual decisions; we get sticky notes and 'let's take this offline.' Progress!
Pre-Scrum: Agendas enforced outcomes. Post-Scrum: Finger paints enforce psychological safety
We refactored the old two-hour status meeting into five 30-minute ceremonies and called it Agile; Little's Law kept throughput constant, but velocity doubled after we switched to Fibonacci crayons
Scrum turned the boardroom into kindergarten: standup is show‑and‑tell, planning is finger‑painting story points, retro is circle time - and bikeshedding finally uses real paint