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Agile is a Sham

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Re: Agile is a Sham

#71

Post by shadowmint »

Direct quote: "Process is, actually, just tax. If you need to follow a prescribed process in order to be in any way an effective coder then you are mediocre at best and so is your work and your project."

No.

Read some history; you'll see the same arguments back years ago about processes being stupid then (80's, 90's) too.

I'm willing to accept that perhaps Agile isn't a perfect process, and that agile projects don't always work out.

However, process just means that you have a repeatable set of steps for generating a repeatable outcome. It's an absolutely vital part of every industry, from manufacturing to farming to, yes, programming.

Everything is a process; TDD is process, writing a plan for your code is process, hell, even just sitting down and hacking away and keeping everything you need in your head is a process.

When you have a team that is larger than one person, organizing that team relies on having expectations from each group in the team, and from each person in the group. That's _formalized_ process, and that's what agile is.

Summary: Opinion piece, unsubstantiated, no background context. Bleh.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#72

Post by creigh »

tbsdy wrote: post #14
creigh wrote: post #10

Let me say this. I have found scrum in particular to be used as a management tool (report back tool), and not a developer tool. It doesn't matter where i go. It starts with the greatest of intentions, and ends up where management are sticking there fingers in the pie half way through. And by that I mean they don't use priorities on the backlog to manage the process. They use the standup meetings as a moan session whe…

I disagree. I've met a LOT of developers who believe they know more than the customer, the QA team, the UX team and the DBAs. And they are, most often, wrong. I think it takes a special sort of programmer to run a project to be honest. They are out there, but they are hard to find!

Just to be clear, I meant the developers should drive the STORY, and not the PROJECT. Is is after all something advocated by scrum.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#73

Post by jonstjohn »

We use agile at my company w/ about 15 employees. We introduced it about two years ago to help focus our development process. Although I know there are some issues with agile, we've fully embraced agile by modifying our process along the way to suit our style. It has worked really well and I wouldn't change it for anything else right now. Does it produce high quality software? I agree that depends on the engineers, but it does produce a predictable process that we all are on board with. That's huge in my eyes.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#74

Post by itsnotme »

matwood wrote: post #68
itsnotme wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional You sell process for a living. You claim, "After all, it's not like you can have no process at all. Whatever you're doing already is a process." When you said that, you accidentally got something right. Programming is a process. It's the only one that fucking matters if you're a shop that sells software. All the other process comes from snake oil salesmen as yours…

Interesting. So how do you build things that take thousands of programming hours to complete? What about projects involving complex rulesets requiring legal input and/or HR input? Programming is a means to an end. The end is solving some problem. For many problems programming is a small part of the overall solution.

If you're planning a project to take thousands of programming hours to complete, you are an idiot, and nothing can help you.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#75

Post by itsnotme »

brazzy wrote: post #51
itsnotme wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional You sell process for a living. You claim, "After all, it's not like you can have no process at all. Whatever you're doing already is a process." When you said that, you accidentally got something right. Programming is a process. It's the only one that fucking matters if you're a shop that sells software. All the other process comes from snake oil salesmen as yours…

Spoken like a true cowboy programmer who can't collaborate his way out of a wet paper bag and blames process when a team he's part of fails because of that...

I enjoy programming with other programmers. But I don't collaborate well with people who don't know a fucking thing about programming who try to put process on top of the process of programming.

Cowboy is a complement. It doesn't mean "lone ranger" or "asshole", it means lazy, hard worker who takes the shortest path to greatest output. So, yup. Cowboy here.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#77

Post by disbelief »

itsnotme wrote: post #74
matwood wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So how do you build things that take thousands of programming hours to complete? What about projects involving complex rulesets requiring legal input and/or HR input? Programming is a means to an end. The end is solving some problem. For many problems programming is a small part of the overall solution.

If you're planning a project to take thousands of programming hours to complete, you are an idiot, and nothing can help you.

So, there's nothing worth building that can't be accomplished in under 1000 hours?

Re: Agile is a Sham

#78

Post by georgemcbay »

bitwize wrote: post #25

No. Process is important; it's necessary. There are at least two prongs to this problem: one is you can't manage what you don't measure, and process gives you a way of tracking functionality implemented, defects, defects resolved, etc. There's nothing inherent to programming that gives your manager or your team any sort of knowledge about how far along you are, or just as importantly, when you will be done. You can h…

Is Agile (big A) really as "proven" as proponents make it out to be?

I'd love to see some citations in the form of "Product XYZ that you know and love is developed using Agile" as opposed to the usual "My cousin's friend's brother's girlfriend used Agile for an internal CRUD tool and it went totally great".

In the real world, the few times I've worked at places that attempted Agile (Scrum both times) I've only seen Agile fail miserably.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#79

Post by itsnotme »

disbelief wrote: post #77
itsnotme wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're planning a project to take thousands of programming hours to complete, you are an idiot, and nothing can help you.

So, there's nothing worth building that can't be accomplished in under 1000 hours?

Lots of meaningful things take thousands of programmer hours. Projects where those thousands of hours are meticulously planned for by non-programmers (whether by using "Agile" or any other process that sits on top of the process of programming) are fucking doomed from the jump.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#80

Post by hack_edu »

mattdeboard wrote: post #2

The world is full of mediocre programmers, and in each cluster of mediocre programmers you'll find that they're surrounding much better programmers. Ergo, since mediocre programmers exist, agile isn't a sham, and is necessary. QED

The notion that some 'good,' 'quality,' or 'talented' programmer is somehow entirely autonomous is entirely a fallacy. I'd trust a team of 'mediocre' programmers that follow process and get it done than place blind trust in a couple cowboys or post-docs who have some claim to genius in a prior life.

Sure, some are better than others. But to those who somehow believe that Great Programmers can do anything, get over yourselves. They (read: you) probably aren't nearly as good as you think.

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