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Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

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Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#211

Post by coldtea »

kryogen1c wrote: post #184
avgDev wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as you should be able to provide an estimate even if it something that you have not completely done before. One should spend some time to gauge how much of this new thing is really "new" and what parts should be easy to figure out. Then, try to look at resources about those unknown parts, and that should allow to provide a rough estimate. And when road blocks come up just communicate early, and then if PM/boss…

Im not a coder, so maybe the domain is different in a way i dont understand, but I agree with you 100%. Refueling nuclear aircraft carriers have projections start to finish, a half decade long. There are countless pre and co requisites with interrelated projects, not counting the mundane issues like material and manpower. I simply do not accept it is impossible to project a timeline for software. If someone stops you…

>I simply do not accept it is impossible to project a timeline for software.

Well, as you said, you're not a coder.

"Refueling nuclear aircraft carriers" has so fewer fail states and unknowns, it's not even comparable to writing a large piece of software.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#212

Post by reroute1 »

kryogen1c wrote: post #184
avgDev wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel as you should be able to provide an estimate even if it something that you have not completely done before. One should spend some time to gauge how much of this new thing is really "new" and what parts should be easy to figure out. Then, try to look at resources about those unknown parts, and that should allow to provide a rough estimate. And when road blocks come up just communicate early, and then if PM/boss…

Im not a coder, so maybe the domain is different in a way i dont understand, but I agree with you 100%. Refueling nuclear aircraft carriers have projections start to finish, a half decade long. There are countless pre and co requisites with interrelated projects, not counting the mundane issues like material and manpower. I simply do not accept it is impossible to project a timeline for software. If someone stops you…

You refuse to accept that there's a possibility of something in a domain you have no understanding of... That sounds like a very illogical refutation in itself

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#213

Post by jnwatson »

In the same way that software is eating the world, software management is eating traditional company management. Software projects are getting more important, sometimes centrally important to the future viability to more and more companies that aren't traditionally software oriented. Software projects are moving up the stack so they touch every part of an organization.

Agile is being blamed for problems that are really organizational, company-wide issues that a software team has to deal with because they now are central to how everything runs. The author's suggest to read more general business/organizational management type books is apropos, because the overall goal is agility of the entire organization, not just the software team.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#214

Post by madeofpalk »

xfitm3 wrote: post #53
quadcore wrote: post #13

Agile never gave organizations a holistic, viable alternative to Waterfall. Because there’s a difference between theory and practice. Product work is more about practice. When we complain about “AINO” (Agile In Name Only), we’re not being honest with ourselves. I agree with most of the article. Specially the keep-learning part. All Agile did was put software development teams unfairly under a microscope. I believe Ag…

I was interested in comp sci precisely because I didn't have to talk to people, an area where every interaction is a performance. I want to be alone - what's so wrong with that?

Ultimately, these days programming is table stakes - IMHO you get zero credit for knowing how to code. The best developers are those who are able to step up and actually interact with people to articulate and understand problems. Whether that's with fellow developers about code, with managers/stakeholders about technical things, or with end-users/clients about users needs.

You're more than welcome to want to sit in isolation and code away, but I would suspect you would find it difficult to do this and be happy. I've never worked in a team that would work with someone like that.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#215

Post by madeofpalk »

quadcore wrote: post #72
xfitm3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was interested in comp sci precisely because I didn't have to talk to people, an area where every interaction is a performance. I want to be alone - what's so wrong with that?

an area where every interaction is a performance Feel ya. Surprisingly enough, I'd say that I've not had to attend so many boring meetings in my career but certainly I'm just lucky. Also, once I did get a manager who was an "agile guru" and he was annoying. He talked to me like he's the jedi of software development and I'm his padawan. Thankfully, he got fired.

Sounds like a bad manager.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#216

Post by FpUser »

Isamu wrote: post #18

Agile is not science-based, it is an ad hoc bag of techniques that seem to have merit. As such you have to be able to reason about what your practices are and you have to relate everything to concrete business goals. Your goal should never be to become "more agile". You should be looking to improve efficiency, to make sure you are building the right thing, to improve communication so that everyone is on the same page…

"Agile is not science-based, it is an ad hoc bag of techniques that seem to have merit"

Each participant of "Agile" development should have this hung on their work place.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#217

Post by techslave »

ebiester wrote: post #133
xfitm3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was interested in comp sci precisely because I didn't have to talk to people, an area where every interaction is a performance. I want to be alone - what's so wrong with that?

You're abdicating your responsibility of developing working software. Your job is to solve problems, using code where appropriate. Your job is to understand the entire system and explain how the corporate system above interacts with the technology you are tasked to develop. If you can't do that, what is the difference between you and a group of outsourced employees making pennies on the dollar?

you’re presupposing he wants to fit into that holistic model, as a senior person. maybe he is fine plugging away at code, the task defined, like a monk transcribing texts.

the world needs both kinds, and a range in between.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#218

Post by madeofpalk »

SkyBelow wrote: post #203
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please keep the "value signalling" BS out of HN.

Why? In all areas of life we judge those around us not by the true facts, but on our limited knowledge. Working to improve that knowledge can result in a change in judgment. It seems completely reasonable for there to be a person who does good work but who isn't know for doing such, and as such is viewed worse than they should be. By working to increase the knowledge of the work they do, their evaluation in the eyes…

Perhaps some thing think it's uncomfortably close to the 'slur' of 'virtue signalling' that people throw around. While I'm sure the intention was nothing but pure in how it was used here, it did make bit second-read the comment to assess whether it was being used in a negative way, and to really understand the point being put across.

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#219

Post by madeofpalk »

Bartweiss wrote: post #123
tootie wrote: post #45

I was prepared for our weekly "I Hate Agile" post, but this one is actually really great. It's a lot of the arguments I make to Agile haters. The fundamental problem that drives most agile failures isn't in the team's execution, it's in the business' expectations. One side is signed up for incremental delivery, and one side is set up for a fixed scope and deadline and the result is misery. I think this article makes…

> One side is signed up for incremental delivery, and one side is set up for a fixed scope and deadline and the result is misery. This is a brilliant summary, thank you. The best 'agile' experiences I've had are situations where the 'clients' are directly involved, often within the same organization. Instead of a hard scope or deadline, there's just a shared interest in producing a valuable product efficiently, and t…

> waterfall contracts, developed by an internal simulation of agile.

We call this wagile

Re: Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)

#220

Post by sombremesa »

ff317 wrote: post #116
me_again wrote: post #39

I have a theory that commercially successful software development methodologies are like diets: they have to be almost impossible to follow. This ensures that when you fail to lose weight/achieve bug free software, you blame yourself for not following the rules exactly, rather than the rules for not working.

That's probably a very apt metaphor, but there's an upside too: many diets actually do at least temporarily help people in spite of their irrational basis, just because $random_diet causes the dieter to observe and reflect on their eating habits more carefully in general. Even a non-sense diet like "eat only foods colored yellow or red" probably does a lot of people a lot of good, compared to their usual state of bei…

I think with this analogy you're presuming that people are exposed to a variety of foods and there is some positive correlation between action and awareness. However, for someone who only ever goes to McDonald's to eat, they'll just switch to french fries and ketchup for your nonsense diet.
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