Is "Agile" is still the best out there? If I have a team of 4-5 bright people, the best way to get them working as a team to produce software for a limited group of people is agile/scrum, right?
Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
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Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#12I Can't agree more. I successfully applied agile ONCE during my 6 year tenure at a fortune 100.
When approached with the question of what I thought was needed to make agile work, my reply was simple: "start with a good team who can handle it."
That advice was of course tossed aside as corporations (especially middle managers) whose primary concern is the ability to shift resources cannot fathom the notion that agile starts with the individuals who compose the team. The sad truth of it was that there very few individuals who are actually capable of being "agile" after being subject to heavy handed processes for years.
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#13Is "Agile" is still the best out there? If I have a team of 4-5 bright people, the best way to get them working as a team to produce software for a limited group of people is agile/scrum, right?
"Agile" has kind of been losing popularity as a term to "software craftsmanship" lately which seems a bit more holistic and less prescriptive than agile/scrum.
Basically it says, "take the parts that make sense from these processes and implement them." Don't do anything without thinking it out fully.
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#14Getting things done is not that hard. I don't need a burn down chart and some dude with a Dilbertesque PHB role to do my job effectively. I view anyone waxing on about so-called agile in the same light as those who speak of synergistic paradigm shifts in innovation etc.
Have you read the Agile manifesto? What about the Software Craftsmanship manifesto?
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#15I Can't agree more. I successfully applied agile ONCE during my 6 year tenure at a fortune 100. When approached with the question of what I thought was needed to make agile work, my reply was simple: "start with a good team who can handle it." That advice was of course tossed aside as corporations (especially middle managers) whose primary concern is the ability to shift resources cannot fathom the notion that agile…
From being on a few agile projects at Fortune 100s, I can attest to this. I once worked in parallel with another agile team that was doing a separate but integrated portion of an entire solution (it was a bunch of apps under one umbrella/initiative). At the risk of tooting my own horn, the other team was disbanded after three months without progress.
The inherent problem that I saw was how those companies treat developers. I'm a consultant, so I was able to do the projects and move on, but it's clear that the companies look at developers as commodities and cannot fathom why somebody who says they can write code is not equal to another person who can write code. After all, aren't all accountants the same? (They're really not.)
Regardless of whatever process you throw at these large companies, if you have a mediocre staff, expect mediocre results.
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#16Isn't this a sign that "agile" as he is defining it simply isn't working?
More importantly, why is this a bad thing? We don't really think that this process was "the" process that would stick for the next hundred years, did we?
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#17The devil is in the details. You still need competent people to determine and estimate tasks, and to implement those tasks. Implementation is the biggie. How do you design the implementation? How complete are your tests? What are the important requirements of the task? There seems to continue to be this idea in management that process will take the place of skilled programmers. That you can then just plug any program…
No amount of "Agile" brand ointment can miraculously turn a rag-tag team of goof offs into a well oiled development crew. And likewise, a team of skilled developers can actually be quite successful without Agile methodologies.
My own experience with Agile is that it's mostly beneficial to the high priests that make their living from it...
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#18Is "Agile" is still the best out there? If I have a team of 4-5 bright people, the best way to get them working as a team to produce software for a limited group of people is agile/scrum, right?
As usual it depends. At the risk of spouting a cliche, there are no silver bullets.
The best way to get a team working is to analyze and enumerate the current problems and shortcomings, and find a way to reduce or eliminate them.
Is the problem with your team:
* They don't make deadlines?
* Too many defects?
* Disconnect between software and customer?
* etc.
Armed with that information, you can see if any of the multitude of Agile methodologies addresses the issues you have, and is something that will work with your team. You can see if you can cherry-pick a technique here or there from a given methodology.
Asking other people what methodology is best is like asking if Java/.NET/rails/django/php/lift is the best way to write a website. You'll get a lot of opinions that sound good and point you in the right direction, but ultimately you need to roll up your sleeves, investigate the options, and make decisions based on your current circumstances.
[And ultimately, this is the problem with the current state of agile. A consultant or evangelist will promote their brand of Agile as a silver bullet without taking the time to look at your organization's problems.]
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#19"Those things that looked “shiny” a few years ago, like TDD or continuous integration, have lost their shine, and aren’t attractive anymore. Don’t believe me? check out the big conferences – seen these topics lately?"
I don't know about TDD, but IMO continuous integration isn't mentioned at conferences anymore because it has won. I haven't seen a software shop not doing continuous integration in years: ranging from huge private companies to government contractors to small fly-by-night shops. Outside companies for which software is part of their product, you still see a lack of it, but in terms of the software industry CI has won.
Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining
#20Getting things done is not that hard. I don't need a burn down chart and some dude with a Dilbertesque PHB role to do my job effectively. I view anyone waxing on about so-called agile in the same light as those who speak of synergistic paradigm shifts in innovation etc.
Have you read the Agile manifesto? What about the Software Craftsmanship manifesto?
Bob Martin couldn't get enough corporate gigs selling his Agile snake-oil so he invested "Craftsmanship".
Just wait, once Craftsmanship runs it's course he will have a new "methodology" hell tell you about, for a fee.