Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Agile Ruined My Life

whattofix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 137 posts

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#111

Post by PotatoEngineer »

snorkel wrote: post #39
lzw wrote: post #2

Implementing scrum turned our team from productive and mostly free of overhead to overbearing, involving a lot of long ass meetings (all meetings are long if you have to stand) and produced a lot of additional confusion. The interesting thing is that previously, with our specs and our so-called waterfall approach were were more agile. It happened naturally as we naturally did incremental development and we naturally…

The gaping vulnerability in the traditional ad-hoc waterfall approach is management is constantly interrupting work in progress and changing the priorities, then wondering aloud why nothing ever seems to get done. Agile is certainly worth the bureaucratic hassles it adds because agile protects developers from the tyranny of ever-changing priorities. At the start of each iteration (every 4 weeks or so) the management…

This can be solved simply by explaining to your management that Change == Things Will Be Late. If your management can't understand this, then it's unlikely that they'll be able to commit to Agile, anyway.

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#112

Post by ams6110 »

btilly wrote: post #15
jasona wrote: post #4

Amen. The greatest success I've had is using a hybrid approach of agile and waterfall. But, let's face it, Agile is anything but agile when it comes to the process. The Agilists out there will be the first to beat you over the head when you don't follow the process by the book.

Agile is anything but agile when it comes to the process. The Agilists out there will be the first to beat you over the head when you don't follow the process by the book. There is a delicious irony here. The first bullet point of the Agile Manifesto is that individuals and interactions matter more than processes and tools. (See http://agilemanifesto.org/ if don't know what I'm talking about.) The heart of the Agile…

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#113

Post by binspace »

bitwize wrote: post #74
Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #10

As a young software developper, what really bores me with Agile, is the name, the shiny box you put things into, where it should just be named "Good practices for software developement". It's the mentality of selling things as products, with some kind of prebuilt ideology and aesthetic built along with the core, that really makes me run far far away. I don't want to be sold a product. The fact that it led people to t…

Eric S. Raymond accurately characterized Agile when he described it as repackaging the things hackers do anyway, in a way that can be sold to non-hackers. Maybe you don't want to be sold a product. You're not the target audience for Agile Methodology(tm). The MBA and Tim Robbins crowd are.

It's also an arguably necessary way to change processes in (largish) organizations who do not have good practices. Sometimes it's necessary to be a highly paid consultant to be taken seriously.

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#114

Post by binspace »

narag wrote: post #48
icfantv wrote: post #26

i read the comments here and wonder if the problems people are expressing here about agile are actually caused by agile, or rather, the people implementing agile? my money's on the latter. agile, like any process, can be abused by those who don't understand or are too process-oriented.

...if the problems people are expressing here about agile are actually caused by agile, or rather, the people implementing agile If there is no way to tell, does it matter? I mean, if Agile requires a perfect implementation, support from everybody, very smart people and luck, is it any good? If I have all that, I can do whatever with any methodology.

Agile does not require perfect implementation.

I have yet to see an "unsuccessful" project using agile, as in the customer and team was not happy with the conclusion (I've been involved with > 10). Usually things change before that point is reached.

If the team cannot change when things start sucking, then things will continue to suck, regardless of methodology or lack of. Most teams can adjust (at least the ones I want to be a part of).

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#116

Post by mattmcknight »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #10

As a young software developper, what really bores me with Agile, is the name, the shiny box you put things into, where it should just be named "Good practices for software developement". It's the mentality of selling things as products, with some kind of prebuilt ideology and aesthetic built along with the core, that really makes me run far far away. I don't want to be sold a product. The fact that it led people to t…

The reason for the name Agile is that it was defined in opposition to what came before it- heavyweight, big design up front, fixed requirements, documentation heavy, non-incremental, non-iterative processes. These methods had names- CMM, RUP, V Model, MDA, MIL-STD-498, and we needed a name for the anti-method to go against them and not be labeled a cowboy coder with no process at all, and sidelined from all important decisions.

These were attempts to take the risk and uncertainty out of the process. Agile is an attempt to provide practices and approaches for dealing with the uncertainty- "embrace change" is very much the opposite of the "change is too expensive" mindset that it was trying to reset.

This adjective "agile" is important, if only to be used as a defense against 300 page requirement documents set in stone by a contract, 500 diagram architectures created before a line of code was written, developers who never got to talk to a user.

If we didn't have agile coaches and advocates, people who sat down to come up with a way to run their project might come up with the naive algorithm and head straight over the waterfall.

I can see how the name doesn't seem to make much sense now that it is bandied about in very prescriptive step by step methods that probably seem not very agile to a person who had not lived through the horrors that came before. However, that is how it should be understood.

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#117

Post by gbhn »

jamesbritt wrote: post #109
api wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest determinant of success that I've seen is the skill of the programmers on the team. No McMethodology can make crappy programmers write good code. Period. (However, really bad management can make good programmers write crappy code too...)

"No McMethodology can make crappy programmers write good code. Period." Can't a McMethodology help crappy programmers become less crappy (and eventually write better code)? Are there any methodologies that can help with this? Ideally, poor developers get replaced by better developers, but realistically this (for all sorts of reasons) doesn't always happen. So, if you're a project or team leader, what can you do to el…

I don't think so, no. My experience is that mediocre and poor programmers take refuge in high-ceremony work environments like agile, where there is basically an infinite amount of non-productive "work" that can be engaged in, and no-one can criticize because they're following the process.

I do think that poor developers can be taught to be better in a work environment, but it's a painful, slow process, and has to be started with an a keen devotion to the process on the part of the trainee, which if it were going to happen at all, would probably have already happened during college.

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#118

Post by chromatic »

gbhn wrote: post #117
jamesbritt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No McMethodology can make crappy programmers write good code. Period." Can't a McMethodology help crappy programmers become less crappy (and eventually write better code)? Are there any methodologies that can help with this? Ideally, poor developers get replaced by better developers, but realistically this (for all sorts of reasons) doesn't always happen. So, if you're a project or team leader, what can you do to el…

I don't think so, no. My experience is that mediocre and poor programmers take refuge in high-ceremony work environments like agile, where there is basically an infinite amount of non-productive "work" that can be engaged in, and no-one can criticize because they're following the process. I do think that poor developers can be taught to be better in a work environment, but it's a painful, slow process, and has to be…

I have difficulty imagining an agile process worth following where standups don't reveal that people aren't doing worthwhile things, where retrospectives don't reveal that estimates have gone horribly wrong, and where pair programming doesn't reveal that some people shouldn't be writing software.

What exactly do these high-ceremony agile projects practice?

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#119

Post by gaius »

chromatic wrote: post #118
gbhn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, no. My experience is that mediocre and poor programmers take refuge in high-ceremony work environments like agile, where there is basically an infinite amount of non-productive "work" that can be engaged in, and no-one can criticize because they're following the process. I do think that poor developers can be taught to be better in a work environment, but it's a painful, slow process, and has to be…

I have difficulty imagining an agile process worth following where standups don't reveal that people aren't doing worthwhile things, where retrospectives don't reveal that estimates have gone horribly wrong, and where pair programming doesn't reveal that some people shouldn't be writing software. What exactly do these high-ceremony agile projects practice?

"Refactoring"

Re: Agile Ruined My Life

#120

Post by dan00 »

The idea of Scrum terrifies me, especially the Daily Scrum, because I've a very cycling productivity. In averaging the days, I get enough done. But if I would have to justify my less productive days, it would be very stressful for me, and it would be quite hard to explain why I couldn't get done more today.
Post reply on HN