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The Agile Fluency Model

martinfowler.com

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Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#71

Post by [deleted] »

honest_george wrote: post #31
jmull wrote: post #21

I love this. "Is [Huge pile of recently promoted buzzwords] not the silver bullet you expected? We've got the answer: [A new pile of buzzwords]!" "Here are some charts and graphs and vague paragraphs to confuse you and intimidate you into hiring us as expert consultants!" It's sort of like the Nigerian email scam, in that they don't even try to hide the big piles of B.S. Anyone who makes it through this without rolli…

I couldn't even read the article, it may as well be written in a different language.

[deleted]

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#72

Post by thesz »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #15
GiorgioG wrote: post #5

The consultants have taken over "Agile" and turned it into a process-heavy set of practices. Over the course of a 2 week sprint I spend more than 8 scheduled hours in various meetings (grooming, planning, scrums,etc.) http://programming-motherfucker.com/

To play devil's advocate... that is 10% of your time in meetings that are defined by scrum to have specific goals that should be accomplished in each. It is possible (every case varies) that that 10% of time spent has a multiplying increase on product quality. It is equally if not more probable it is a waste of time too though. Especially if the scrum master can't stay focused. I've been able to get 20 person scrum /…

The time it takes to return to focused/productive state is roughly proportional to interruption time.

So this guy above spent 10% of time on meetings and another 10% of his time on the exists and returns to productive state.

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#73

Post by chrisseaton »

sankyo wrote: post #64
chrisseaton wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In agile are you permanently in a sprint? When one sprint ends you start a new one, right? That's insane - you can't sprint all your life.

Do cops and doctors get “free time” between cases? If you let the product team dictate every story, you are doing it wrong. Grow a spine and negotiate some tech stories into the sprint. After you establish credibility, it will get better. If something needs refactoring and a 2point story comes along with that code, make it a 5 point story and clean up the code. In a business, cash is oxygen and it must make smart cho…

> Do cops and doctors get “free time” between cases?

No but they plan to have a workload that doesn’t mean they have to work as fast as they can for their entire career.

You can’t sprint all the time. If you are then you aren’t really at your sprint speed.

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#74

Post by MartinCron »

dep_b wrote: post #34

The problem with Agile is that it's a thing that only works with adult (of any age) programmers that have enough experience to be let loose and prosper. If you're going to pour Agile over chain gang junior sweatshops you're just doing cargo cult Agile. I think it's important that somebody starts thinking about what the best methodology for mediocre product managers for managing mediocre programmers is - and I say thi…

I don’t think there’s any sauce you could pour over a chain gang of immature programmers to make them palatable.

When building teams, I deliberately aim for a mix of developers of more and less experience, as that is a more realistic sustainable steady state than a half dozen superstars.

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#75

Post by GiorgioG »

subway wrote: post #69
GiorgioG wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a real anti-engineering bias in this industry. What we do is hardly real engineering in most cases. I don't mean medical or transportation systems. In BigCorp, most of us write line of business applications, which will generally speaking not directly kill anyone - unlike designing/engineering bridges, roof systems, etc.

I've watched the "my product isn't safety critical" line of thinking utterly fuck some companies. Any recommendations on which of your projects I can keep an eye on?

I've done work for organizations where the practices ranged from extremely strict processes, to no process at all (from requirements gathering to devops.) I feel my best experiences were always in places that had some process that was developed over time, that had management in place that was willing to experiment with changes to said processes. But the way Agile is bought into at most big companies these days...it feels like management just wants to be lazy: "follow the process because hey that's what these smart guys say worked over in org X" even if it's a waste of time/resources/etc.

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#77

Post by jungturk »

gaius wrote: post #37
taneq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "sprint" compared with "walk", as in "go flat out". It's "sprint" compared with "marathon", as in "short burst and we're done". Using the word 'sprint' as an excuse for permanent crunch time is doing it wrong.

But you’re not done. A sprint is immediately followed by another sprint.

But you are done - with the goals of that sprint. You complete the work, reflect, and reset for the next sprint's goals.

Think Pomodoro technique rather than belaboring the marathon/sprint metaphor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#78

Post by jdmichal »

swanson wrote: post #63
seertaak wrote: post #16

> Delivering teams deliver on the market cadence. "delivering teams deliver" -- got that. "... on the market cadence" -- err... market. cadence?

I think it captures a subtle nuance pretty well. If you're building a SaaS app, you can release several times a day and users will not notice and be fine. If you're building a mobile app, you can release maybe 1-2 times a month and users will be fine. If you push out 3 app store updates every day, that is going against the market cadence. If you're building software for automated machinery, you can release maybe 1-2…

I disagree. I got the opportunity to hear a talk from Jez Humble, and one of his examples was HP and printer drivers. So this is likely in your last scenario there. They still reaped a lot of benefits from fixing their development processes and advancing continuous integration and automated testing. It looks like it might be mentioned in this podcast, though I haven't listened yet:

http://www.se-radio.net/2015/02/episode-221-jez-humble-on-co...

EDIT: HP is covered roughly minutes 8-10.

Also found this, though I'm having trouble getting the video to load to vet it:

https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/continuous-de...

Re: The Agile Fluency Model

#79

Post by kolinko »

jmull wrote: post #21

I love this. "Is [Huge pile of recently promoted buzzwords] not the silver bullet you expected? We've got the answer: [A new pile of buzzwords]!" "Here are some charts and graphs and vague paragraphs to confuse you and intimidate you into hiring us as expert consultants!" It's sort of like the Nigerian email scam, in that they don't even try to hide the big piles of B.S. Anyone who makes it through this without rolli…

Perhaps we should invent some kind of a term for Agile, as it was meant originally...

"Agile? I'm not doing Agile. I'm doing Post-agile."

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