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Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

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Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#151

Post by fsloth »

spinlock wrote: post #140
fsloth wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally claiming that a person is doing the method wrong when the method brings no percieved benefits raises a red flag on the general applicability and value of the methodology itself on the problem the person is trying to solve. There is no one true way to organize development of software and generally shoehorning dogma without proof of value is counterproductive.

I think you can absolutely diagnose an hour-long daily standup as "wrong". Standups need to be limited to 10-15 minutes. That's one of the key tenants of standups: they need to be short and focused.

Yes, regardless of the process framework used having the team meet daily for an hour is pathological and probably is indicator of deeper issues. Which just doing agile "more by the book" wont fix.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#152

Post by ashark »

sebringj wrote: post #51

It never seems complicated when I am doing my own side work for some reason. There are no design meetings, no hours tracking, no arguments on best practices, no scrum, no testing frameworks, dev ops, etc. I do use git and minimally create bash scripts to simplify repetitive tasks for deployment but its just a huge contrast to working in teams where something simple takes about 50 times longer. I think keeping things…

One of the things that helps when you're developing your own projects is that you can single-handedly decide to ruthlessly cull parts of the project that take lots of time but provide little value, and you (probably) have decent insight into what those are. You're also probably not at a scale where doing certain really crappy, slow parts of the job can pay off, so you can skip those.

Default form elements with some basic, nice styling to fit your theme? Form done in one hour. Special snowflake version of the same thing from the design team, which has no idea what the platform can and cannot easily be made to do, but the client is absolutely in love with? Two days, a third party dependency or two, some extra environment-specific bugs to track down later, and generally increased fragility (so more time lost in the future). This has slowed you down now and increased the resources required for the project indefinitely. But the client looooooves it.

Support Android pre-5.0, at the cost of 20% more development time, a pile of extra bug reports, an uglier, harder-to-maintain codebase, and a much much longer testing cycle, for a side project? Hell no. Client says that will cost them $4 million/yr not to support those? Ugh. FINE.

And so on, and so on.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#153

Post by patmcguire »

fsloth wrote: post #90
WalterSear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like the 'Agile' team is doing standups right. There are either too many people in the room, or people are talking too much, and probably about the wrong things. And, if they are doing standups wrong, I question how much else they are cargo-culting.

Generally claiming that a person is doing the method wrong when the method brings no percieved benefits raises a red flag on the general applicability and value of the methodology itself on the problem the person is trying to solve. There is no one true way to organize development of software and generally shoehorning dogma without proof of value is counterproductive.

Eh, it's valid in this case. Ten minutes standup is formulated as being opposed to a full meeting. The full meeting was there first, standups are supposed to be different. If it's turning into the full meeting it's worth calling that out.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#154

Post by lisivka »

acbabis wrote: post #93
reacharavindh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, everyone in there knows that scrum meetings should be short, but somehow those meetings take long, because everyone thinks their questions needs answers and their dependabcies definitely must be resolved.. so, an hour it goes.

Our meeting format was for each person to say a) What they worked on, b) What they were about to work on, and c) If they needed help with anything. Our rule was that you could ask for help as long as you were just scheduling a time to meet after the stand-up. It worked really, really well. Then we got a new scrum master whose desired format was to talk about each item on the Kanban board each day, even the ones that…

It's status meeting. Developers unlike status meeting, so they invented their own meeting: daily standup meeting.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#155

Post by st3v3r »

fsloth wrote: post #90
WalterSear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like the 'Agile' team is doing standups right. There are either too many people in the room, or people are talking too much, and probably about the wrong things. And, if they are doing standups wrong, I question how much else they are cargo-culting.

Generally claiming that a person is doing the method wrong when the method brings no percieved benefits raises a red flag on the general applicability and value of the methodology itself on the problem the person is trying to solve. There is no one true way to organize development of software and generally shoehorning dogma without proof of value is counterproductive.

I'm sorry, but no, it doesn't. Sometimes people just do things the wrong way, and there's nothing that can be done other than to tell them they're doing things wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#156

Post by lisivka »

dasmoth wrote: post #141
WalterSear wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same. The standup performs an important social function of making everyone involved in the work of the team. People have to face each other, feel accountable to, and feel supported by the group. And of course there's no room for synching up: The morning standup is meant to facilitate those synch-up meetings, synch-ups that don't have to involve everyone.

>>> The standup performs an important social function of making everyone involved in the work of the team. People have to face each other, feel accountable to, and feel supported by the group. This is a fantastic description. And it goes a long way towards explaining why standup (even if I'm not directly involved) leave me feeling so uncomfortable.

Kick project manager out of standup meeting and you will love them.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#158

Post by corysama »

petra wrote: post #131
corysama wrote: post #27

One of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's "Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?" It addresses your question directly, but at a very, very high level. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY Note that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and that the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote. Instead, it is…

I wonder why did he chose to built demo applications, instead of a powerful and useful development tool that has strong value somewhere ?

Seems like the resources he had to work with in the VPRI project were pretty limited. It will be interesting to see what his team comes up with now that they are working with SAP and YC.

So far, I know about this: https://harc.ycr.org/project/

Hopefully, they're shooting for something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#159

Post by cookiecaper »

fsloth wrote: post #119
corysama wrote: post #27

One of my fav tech talks ever (and I watch a lot of tech talks) is Alan Kay's "Is it really 'complex'? Or, did we just make it 'complicated'?" It addresses your question directly, but at a very, very high level. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY Note that the laptop he is presenting on is not running Linux/Windows/OSX and that the presentation software he is using is not OoO/PowerPoint/Keynote. Instead, it is…

I can't understand why people don't refer more often on Mr. Kays message. To be bluntly uncharitable and only half kidding, I do understand why consultants don't buy into it. Simpler systems that are less fragile mean less work.

Employees and management don't buy into it for the same reason that consultants don't buy into it. It means less work. Less opportunity to sound smart, seize control, and/or ego stroke. Less variety to break up the work-week's monotony.

Re: Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?

#160

Post by meheleventyone »

piva00 wrote: post #73
reacharavindh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I should have made it clearer. I ranted likea personal thought than a definitive statement. The teams work on different projects. The diversity and experience of its members are different. They are not strictly comparable. But, looking at both teams from above, it feels like the non agile team is very simple and it works. The agile team is more complicated and works only on paper.

From my personal experience: experienced teams can thrive with almost no methodology and an ad-hoc process because... They had experience with other processes and can see the good and bad in them. I still advocate agile for less homogeneous teams or in situations like other posts have highlighted but a team of more senior developers with a working process that is open to be improved (one of the cornerstones of agile)…

For me Agile is by definition an ad-hoc process just one with guiding principles for how to go about organising it. The problem comes with formalised methodologies based on Agile which are treated as a one size fits all approach for any team.
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