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Agile is a Sham

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Re: Agile is a Sham

#81

Post by roguecoder »

How well a team works together depends on far more than how smart the component engineers are. One clever engineer may be sufficient for a Suduku problem, but it is a matter of scale. This fellow is basically arguing that we don't need government because people get along just fine on their own. Which is absolutely true on an individual scale, and not at all true as soon as two people live next door to one another.

In my experience 90% of software problems are social problems. He seems to care only about technical problems, and assumes those are solved by the magic of intelligence. I believe that if you can not explain to someone else how to do what you do, you aren't actually a master of your craft. Appeals to hire smarter coders sound incredibly hollow unless they are accompanied by techniques to make the average coder smarter.

There are much better critiques of Agile out there, mostly having to do with how it has been sold. I'm not sure what he thinks he is contributing to the discussion.

Any process can be harmful. It can also be incredibly useful, and the lack of process is at least as harmful as process applied badly. I recommend the book "The Checklist Manifestos" for examples. It proposes that the goal of process is to handle routine complexity and make cooperation routine, leaving human attention and effort free to focus on the actual hard problems.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#82

Post by wpietri »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

[Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional who wrote an earlier rant "Agile Ruined my Life" http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-... Also I am writing some practical how-to Agile e-books trying to undo some of the damage: http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm ] Just differentiate between what Agile is and how people are pushing Agile on you. Different things entirely. Agile is be…

Exactly. And this shit makes me furious.

I got involved with this stuff before the term "Agile" existed. At the beginning, it was a bunch of professionals (mostly developers) sincerely trying to find better ways of working. Extreme Programming, for example, came to be because the developers were really interested to experiment with how their team got stuff done.

It breaks my heart that in the ensuing decade it has turned into exactly the kind of bullshit, top-down, PHB-fluffing idiocy that early agilists were trying to get away from. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, the focus is supposed to be on a) people, b) shipping working software, c) collaboration, and d) being adaptable. That is sure not what it has become.

In my view, we made a crucial mistake: we didn't think about money and power enough. Now the Agile industry is 98% selling idiotic certifications and homeopathic doses of process improvement to organizations that don't really want to change anything at all.

Mad. It makes me mad. Sorry we screwed it up, everybody.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#83

Post by roguecoder »

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?

Well, the Agile approach is to break them down into smaller things that can be accomplished in under 1,000 hours.

"There's nothing that can be accomplished in a single chunk taking more than a 1,000 hours that will produce a system with a manageable and maintainable level of complexity unless it is broken into smaller, well-defined and loosely-coupled components," perhaps.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#84

Post by vannevar »

itsnotme wrote: post #75
brazzy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Fair enough. But what about someone who does know a lot about programming, who runs his team using agile methods. Could you collaborate well with that person?

Re: Agile is a Sham

#85

Post by pnathan »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

[Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional who wrote an earlier rant "Agile Ruined my Life" http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-... Also I am writing some practical how-to Agile e-books trying to undo some of the damage: http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm ] Just differentiate between what Agile is and how people are pushing Agile on you. Different things entirely. Agile is be…

Don't you think that agile proponents are frequently using a No True Scotsman here?

That is,

Statement: No Agile Team would do X.

Response: An Agile Team did do X.

Statement: Well, no True Agile Team would do X.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

Re: Agile is a Sham

#86

Post by vannevar »

guynamedloren wrote: post #11

See, the thing is, the success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow. The success of the non-coding part of a project is dependent on the calibre of your sales/management and how they interact with the customer. If you are trying to prescribe some rigid process, however lean, in order to make that interaction effective, then you…

[T]he success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow.

And the success of an NFL team has nothing to do with process either. It's all the players. That's why they never hold practices or review footage with the coaches. Who needs set plays? Tom Brady just tells Wes Welker to go deep and get open. You guys up front block. That's it. Super Bowl. Process is for losers.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#87

Post by [deleted] »

guynamedloren wrote: post #11

See, the thing is, the success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow. The success of the non-coding part of a project is dependent on the calibre of your sales/management and how they interact with the customer. If you are trying to prescribe some rigid process, however lean, in order to make that interaction effective, then you…

[deleted]

Re: Agile is a Sham

#88

Post by gnaffle »

itsnotme wrote: post #79
disbelief wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The software that keeps all modern airliners in the sky is written by companies that have lots and lots of process. Do you think those software projects are doomed from the jump just because there's a lot of process involved?

Re: Agile is a Sham

#89

Post by stcredzero »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

[Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional who wrote an earlier rant "Agile Ruined my Life" http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-... Also I am writing some practical how-to Agile e-books trying to undo some of the damage: http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm ] Just differentiate between what Agile is and how people are pushing Agile on you. Different things entirely. Agile is be…

Just differentiate between what Agile is and how people are pushing Agile on you. Different things entirely.

Agile could be deleted, and replaced with a variable. Sturgeon's Law at work.

The second secret is that most teams, frankly, are not that good.

Again, Sturgeon's Law at work.

Re: Agile is a Sham

#90

Post by stcredzero »

gnaffle wrote: post #88
itsnotme wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The software that keeps all modern airliners in the sky is written by companies that have lots and lots of process. Do you think those software projects are doomed from the jump just because there's a lot of process involved?

The cost/benefit tradeoff is very different for those companies. Usually, no one almost dies when your social app goes belly-up.
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