Humans are great at talking about problems for extended periods of time, ad nauseam, and less good at just getting starting on the solution.
There are at least 6 or 7 bugs and tiny missing features in the software I own at work that would improve the dev and support experience, but I always feel guilty stopping work on my main tasks to tackle them.
This is exactly why I’m anti-agile/scrum. You have to get buy in from your manager, team, and product owner for every bit of your productivity, and taking on work that is not explicitly scoped without consulting the broader group is considered being a bit of a cowboy.
Well, I am a bit of a cowboy. But I’m fortunate enough to have a management chain who trusts me to prioritize and incorporate small fixes and features as part of regular development. Admittedly it’s easier when your customers are internal devs, because you know exactly what they want after fielding their stream of questions, support requests, and “would be cool if”s.
Per scrum, only the product owners get to prioritize the backlog, and only dev team should selecting tasks. No manager or team buy in.
And if it's an internal tool, then those devs are your product owners.
The first principle of agile is people over process. A lot of people like to blame agile for processes that their own teams just made up instead of taking accountability.
My teams have quarterly "do whatever you want" sprints where bugs like this are targeted.
There are at least 6 or 7 bugs and tiny missing features in the software I own at work that would improve the dev and support experience, but I always feel guilty stopping work on my main tasks to tackle them.