Welcome change...but every two weeks. I do see this too often.. every day the manager comes in with a new idea and the team jumps on it. This is called a sprint hijack and can destroy morale and productivity. After a sprint begins, the team should be 'locked down' and any new ideas should be added to the backlog. When you do your sprint planning, then you go through the backlog and decide what's important.

You would never deliver if you had new requirements every day. Scrum is meant to always deliver and you should deliver something every two weeks.

Alright, I'll bite. What do you mean that you're doing it wrong. Agile is supposed to be many things but as long as you follow a few key ideas, it'll work better than waterfall.

1) Continuous delivery. Deliver something every two weeks.
2) Quickly fail. If a problem is found in a design or a project, find it early and save tons of money.
3) Small teams. No 80-person teams here.
4) Small tasks that you should accomplish quickly helping with visibility
5) Highly visible tasks and burndowns to help with "buy in" from upper mgmt
6) Open communication meaning that the team has the responsibility of fixing things, identifying poor performers, and helping people to succeed.

No manager... just scrum masters.

Just these few key points make a world of difference and can be key to success. I haven't seen it fail but maybe you were in a company of design-by-personality...

Just saying

Try these... some are companies, some are blogs... but you get the idea

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/microsoft-cryptome/
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/first-amendment-under-attack-feds-shut/
http://boingboing.net/2010/07/23/dmca.html
http://vigilant.tv/article/3328/blackboxvotingorg-shut-down-under-dmca-for-linking
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/09/intellectual-property-laws-abused-in-quest-to-shutdown-lowes-sucks-com.ars

There are hundreds... I simply googled: "companies shut down by DMCA"

This one is plain weird:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/_improper_use_of_copyright.php

In fact, the only important new software companies in the last 12 years have been Facebook and Twitter and they are often cited as a counter example to those who hate the DMCA.

Ignoring their insignificance, can you think of one other...?

These companies succeeded because MS, Sun, and their ilk ignored these startup companies until they were large largely because the conglomerates didn't understand them or their significance. Now, MS tries to pay attn to all startups and we haven't seen a single company in 5 years (Twitter is 2006) since.

On a positive note...shutdowns have slowed as the conglomerates are seeing that their efforts in DMCA notices are "killing the golden goose" that they can later buyout and remain competitive.

Unfortunately, those companies who disappear can't be googled... because they no longer exist.

When I lived in Dallas, I personally witnessed two startups shut down by DMCA. One was a company my friend started doing security software for the Palm and WinCE.

My mistake... DMCA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

The DCMA notoriously was touted as solving the online piracy problem. The cold reality is that almost ten thousand small companies have shuttered their doors in the last almost 15 years. New startups are forced to prove that they are not infringing and while waiting they must cease all development. This can take months and cost upwards of 100K meaning that most tech startups must simply shutter their doors. Microsoft alone has filed DCMA takedown notices almost 500 times and is successful at shuttering the company nearly every time.

Now, media sites can be shut down for being "copyright infringing" with very little evidence to the contrary. A small company cannot fight the likes of MS, IBM, Apple, Sun, or the host of other awful DCMA bastards and now they'll need to worry about Bartlesman, Dreamworks, Pixar, and the like. This simply makes it impossible to start a new media company because all that the media conglomerates have to do is claim that someone is stealing and without your company being informed, you can be shut down. The DCMA shuts down software and this new rule will shutdown new media.

The DCMA is one of the main reasons that more and more companies are successfully competing in software development overseas and why more and more software is coming from Russia, China, Norway, and so on. It is becoming impossible to create a new software startup. And now in the land of unintended consequences, we just shipped all of our movie, music, and game production overseas.

There have been no new Googles for over a decade and we wonder where all of the jobs are going.

Also, they are demanding immediate injunctive relief... which court is available that can read this complaint today. With courts slammed and Congress unable to approve judges (or do much of anything useful), where will anyone be able to provide "immediate" injunctive relief?

Lastly, Hurd hasn't done anything yet. They are finding him guilty without any proof, before the fact, and without due process. Boy is HP a bunch of brats... "we can't have him and you can't either".

At least they didn't try to have him killed.

In general, non-compete agreements are not enforceable. There are exceptions, but in this case, Hurd was fired/released and as such, non-competes are particularly egregious. The courts will have to decide, but this one is likely to work in Hurd's favor.

Game design and the creative process in general are trainable processes much like music, painting, dance sculpture, etc. There is creativity in all of these, but mostly it's about technical prowess.

Also, remember this? 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

I am working on an MMO and we have roughly 20 game designers now with plans to double that count. They write scripts, design the levels, gossip and NPC chat, GUI, user interaction, grouping, and all of the myriad of in-game features like trading, trade skills, and repairing weapons.

This is a highly technical field and only little bit creative.

There is also a small bit of management.

It's not that hard. I've been in games for 15 years and some companies do have death-march schedules from time-to-time, but in general, that is extremely rare. Working less than a 50 hour workweek is also kinda rare. About 40% of projects I have worked on have been canceled. The perception that I never do anything serious with my life is met on the battlefield against the perception that making games rocks, and you can can guess who remains the victor in that contest year after year.

Your assessment that game companies don't last too long is correct: about five years on average and very few companies for whom I have worked still exist today. When in between game gigs, I have worked in business software, networking, embedded software, and even defense.

Still, in games, the money is above average, the challenges are far more interesting than you get working in business software, and the core competencies are very similar to RTOS development. Also, many things required in games like hard-core optimization, low-level design, memory management, and so on are mainstay of games which the business world never needs... I love that stuff. Plus, I get paid to do graphics one day, tools in C# another, writing scripting languages another (integrating Lua usually), and implementing a new chat window on another. It is always very interesting.

At this point, you feel a little queasy, but probably not enough to quit your job... it probably doesn't seem like a big enough deal over which to quit. But, your boss is demonstrating that he does not feel queasy which means that if this trend continues, you may be doing something very unseemly for him before you know it. Ethics is a hard one because you need to work and minor offenses that your boss approves don't really reflect on you, right? You are doing what you are told and you even wrote something on Slashdot which should help clear you conscience.

That fact is that all companies do some unethical things (which is why companies should be highly regulated IMHO). We should consider what it really means though for you to follow orders in this case.

First, you are validating your bosses bad behavior and in effect telling him that he's doing a good job.
Second, you are encouraging other people to copy software.
Third, you are not taking a stand and demonstrating to others that your own ethics might be less-than-stellar.

Lastly, there is the legal issue. You might just go to jail.

Other than quitting, you can simply find out the costs, present them to your boss as a plan for upgrade, and give it to him every few weeks. That way, you are taking initiative, demonstrating that you care, and showing that most software doesn't really cost very much. Also, encouraging the company to use open source might just push him toward being more ethical and get you a promotion.