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Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

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Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#41

Post by MartinCron »

wrs wrote: post #31

I hate to use the word "Agile" because the very act of naming seems to encourage the nonproductive behaviors the OP is talking about. Calling it a "process" is even worse, because it's a metaprocess, not a process. Like he says, "it's the doing, the reflecting, and the adapting that count the most." That doesn't really need a name; that's just how you become good at anything . Software, jazz piano, raising chickens..…

I hate to use the word "Agile" because it has lots of baggage at this point. There's the lingering smell of snake-oil salesman, the push-back against hardcore zealots who can't cross the gap between theory and practice, and the overly simplistic "I know what the English word 'agile' means" interpretation.

And while I love what a lot of people are doing around "Lean" software/startups, I'm starting to hate using that word, too.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#42

Post by philwelch »

MartinCron wrote: post #40
api wrote: post #37

Agile is just another in a long line of fads that try to use management "methodologies" to make programming a commodity that can be done by line-workers. It's not, and it can't be made so. Programming is a highly skilled craft. Good code is written by good programmers. Bad code is written by bad programmers. Bad management can hobble good programmers, but no form of management can make bad programmers write good code…

Agile is just another in a long line of fads that try to use management "methodologies" to make programming a commodity that can be done by line-workers It's sad that so many people have that perspective. I've always looked at it in the opposite way. I mean, the first part of the agile manifesto is "People over Process" and the first wave of agile evangelists were actual programmers and not fad-prone management types…

Yes, but actual programmers with an altruistic desire to improve the state of software development are never going to be as loud and noisy as various salesmen (agile consultancies, agile coaches, agile tool developers) and hence the latter group of people are going to take over the word "agile".

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#45

Post by jt2190 »

Silhouette wrote: post #24

Assuming facts not in evidence error at line 1: Presumption that Agile ever ascended. The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a…

  The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few 
  proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and 
  often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords 
  were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of 
  promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make 
  a political speechwriter proud, which didn't actually say anything at 
  all about the practical steps that were useful.
Avoiding creating a list of helpful practices was by design. The signatories of the Agile Manifesto were all very seasoned developers, and like all seasoned developers they knew that a practice that helps in one case harms in another.

You can kind of see how it might go wrong from there:

  * Seasoned developer makes list of helpful practices,
    without providing context, i.e. "Helps in this case,
    harms in this case."
  * Unseasoned developer doesn't understand when and where 
    practice is "helpful", tries to use it in all and every 
    case. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails.
  * Unseasoned developer who complains: "Helpful practice X
    didn't work for me" is told "You're doing it wrong." 
    Again, no explanation of when and where the practice is
    helpful is provided.
The takeaway here is to always, always, ALWAYS describe the context when describing a solution, i.e. "This is what worked for me, in this situation."

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#46

Post by BadassFractal »

Silhouette wrote: post #24

Assuming facts not in evidence error at line 1: Presumption that Agile ever ascended. The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a…

Organizing groups of people to put together something decent in a highly limited amount of time and with humane treatment is extremely hard. I don't see Programming, Motherfucker addressing that in any way.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#47

Post by Silhouette »

jt2190 wrote: post #45
Silhouette wrote: post #24

Assuming facts not in evidence error at line 1: Presumption that Agile ever ascended. The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a…

The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a political speechwriter proud, which didn't actually say anything at all about the prac…

I don't notice any hesitation from those "seasoned developers" when it comes to advocating specific practices elsewhere. According to Bob Martin, if you don't do TDD you're not even professional, for example.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#48

Post by Silhouette »

BadassFractal wrote: post #46
Silhouette wrote: post #24

Assuming facts not in evidence error at line 1: Presumption that Agile ever ascended. The basic problem with the Agile movement is that it took a few proven helpful practices -- almost all of which were well known and often used by experienced software developers before the buzzwords were attached, even if managers didn't realise -- and instead of promoting those, it wrote a "manifesto" so vague that it would make a…

Organizing groups of people to put together something decent in a highly limited amount of time and with humane treatment is extremely hard. I don't see Programming, Motherfucker addressing that in any way.

I don't see much evidence of Agile methodologies addressing that in any way, either. That's rather the point.

After this long, if Agile is as superior to the alternatives as its advocates frequently claim, there should be heaps of empirical data miles high to justify each and every practice these consultants charge so much to explain by now. So where are they?

The best I've seen any big name Agile consultant cite is a handful of small-scale experiments, mostly using CS students rather than experienced industrial practitioners, invariably not controlling for using unit tests alone without the TDD process, that show that projects using TDD have modest but inconsistent and frankly unspectacular gains over projects that don't bother unit testing at all.

I'm a scientist. I believe in the data in front of me, and my conclusions on these matters are falsifiable. I will be happy to revise my opinions if and when new evidence shows any of them to be incorrect, but that evidence had better be more than a few alleged experts telling me what they think I should believe if I'm going to change the development practices of entire teams based on it.

Re: Warning Signs that Agile Is Declining

#50

Post by oconnore »

BadassFractal wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #37

Agile is just another in a long line of fads that try to use management "methodologies" to make programming a commodity that can be done by line-workers. It's not, and it can't be made so. Programming is a highly skilled craft. Good code is written by good programmers. Bad code is written by bad programmers. Bad management can hobble good programmers, but no form of management can make bad programmers write good code…

I feel you got it backwards. The whole idea behind agile is to treat programming as a craft and to focus on the people, as opposed to treating development as a production line. Some good readings on the subject: Extreme Programming Explained, Agile Software Development Ecosystems, Balancing Agility and Discipline.

My problem with this is the 4th tenet: "Responding to change over following a plan".

Some tasks require lots of planning. When you are building a complex system, you cannot plan as you go, and in some cases your first usable release cannot happen after the first 'sprint'. In this way, agile programming assumes that the programmer cannot make long term development plans, and in fact prevents him from doing so. While this eliminates some of the risk, it also prevents programmers from reasoning about their problem holistically, and can deliver inferior or non functioning solutions for projects that do not happen to fit the model well.

This refusal to allow programmers to reason holistically is part of what us critics mean when we say that agile attempts to turn programmers into line workers.

Complex projects, like building a jetliner (or the programming equivalent), cannot be "continuously integrated" with no up front planning. For projects like this, you need to decide the thrust of your engines before you start to design the airframe, or your entire project may fall apart, literally.

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