I dislike agile and scrum not because I think they're bad ideas - in fact, there are some good ones in there. The problem is they're so doctrinaire. A "manifesto", scrum masters, agile consultants, etc are all there to enforce processes that don't always make sense for any given team or organization, and they detach you from the reality of actual productivity. Didn't assign the right number of points to your scrum story? Didn't break things down into tasks properly? Velocity fail? If these are your problems, then you're focusing on the wrong things.
Seven Things I Hate About Agile
41–50 of 124 posts
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can make an observation about old people because I myself am 49 years old That doesn't make any logical sense. All that suggests is that you have n=1 experience with people over the age of forty. As for observing that agile events in your neck of the woods are full of older people, there are many, many possible explanations for this and your blog post advances one without providing evidence that it is anything othe…
I don't make a conjecture about the reason that agile events skew to an older crowd because I really, really don't know why it is true. I do know that it changes the whole perception of the effort. So, I have to be careful when I use the word "agile". It's got a demographic implication that isn't positive, isn't "us" for many younger people. You can argue about the wisdom of my saying it this way, but the word has a…
It's got a demographic implication that isn't positive, isn't "us" for many younger people
Compared to what, exactly? What development management practices do have an "us" demographic for younger people? One possibility is that you will reply and name one or more named practices with a "young" demographic, and I will accept your point.
The other possibility is that there really isn't a development management practice that has a "young" demographic, that young developers just aren't into spending a lot of time thinking about practices.
If the second case is true, I really believe it undermines your point. If young developers don't really align towards any particular named repeatable practice, Agile is no better and no worse than anything else on account of the age of the people interested in it enough to attend events. It isn't worth "hating" agile for its lack of traction any more than hating PERT charts or Theory of Constraints.
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#43So who the hell are Assembla and why should anybody care what they have to say? All I'm seeing here is a lot of misinformed ranting. Sure, there's a kernel or two of truth hidden away in there, but most good rants have that. I don't see that TFA makes any sort of interesting point or arrives at any real conclusion that's helping anybody make a decision though. Oh wait, I'm almost 40, so I guess I'm too busy decaying…
That part struck me too.
On the other hand, agile is the anathema of good data modelling and it causes productivity gains early on which lead to ossification and inflexibility later. This doesn't mean that there is now room for agile development, just that it needs some boundaries.
One of the key areas we are trying to move with LedgerSMB is a solid, well-engineered database (not nearly there yet) with a framework for developing agile applications built on top of it.
I suspect that as we get older we start valuing conservative, iterative processes more and that may be a part of the age thing. However, regarding data management it seems like we keep chasing the same lessons over and over that we have been chasing since the 80's. In the 80's it was relational databases vs special purpose ones. Then it was relational databases vs object oriented ones. The object-relational databases started to take off followed by a backlash. Now it is relational (dumb relational) vs object-relational (smart relational) vs NoSQL (object oriented databases 2.0).
Yeah, this is a great idea. Let's speed up our development time right now by closing all sorts of doors for the future and ensuring that we have to handle legacy object models going back to whenever we started our project!
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>What's good ice cream? Any damn thing you'd like it to be. Therefore -- What's Agile? Any damn thing you'd like it to be.
Eh, maybe. You could not offer "good ice cream" for sale and instead deliver cookies.
Unless you go to a molecular gastronomy restaurant where they are as likely to serve you good ice cream in the form of a cookie or a cookie in the form of good ice cream.
But yeah I see what you mean and in general agree with you.
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#45I'm not a big fan of agile either but "over 40" == "the smell of death"? Seriously? Not a convincing, or classy, opening line. And this was posted by the CEO of Assembla.
It's the ageism that stinks. What if he had identified women or an ethnic group as the primary consumers of Agile in the same terms? Irrelevant at least, self-revealing prejudice at worst.
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#46I like how the opening point is ageism. Really classy.
I don't think it's ageism. It's a good observation. Unfortunately, as you progress up the ladder in the industry, you're more likely to be attending conferences in a management capacity. I know this as I'm right there now. The younger people here are doing, not attending conferences.
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Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#47I agree with there being lots of old people in the community of agile-enthusiasts. My theory is that this is because most young people have never worked for a large company with lots of top-down processes and agile is just the default/what comes naturally.
This is somewhat similar to the issue of the Cathedral and the Bazaar in software engineering. Most young people have never even seen a Cathedral and just consider the Bazaar model the default.
Edit: No offense to anyone in that demographic btw. I have great respect for everyone involved in that community, I just don't think it is very interesting for kids that never knew anything else
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#48So who the hell are Assembla and why should anybody care what they have to say? All I'm seeing here is a lot of misinformed ranting. Sure, there's a kernel or two of truth hidden away in there, but most good rants have that. I don't see that TFA makes any sort of interesting point or arrives at any real conclusion that's helping anybody make a decision though. Oh wait, I'm almost 40, so I guess I'm too busy decaying…
You think you have problems? I am 40 and one of those silly "girl" people:
Pair programming is like those girls that go to the restaurant bathroom together.
In Andy Singleton's universe, I should just go die already.
P.S. Used Assembla on a client. Very subpar tool, IMHO.
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#49I totally agree about the scrum master role. I have never understood the need for a scrum master when there are product managers and tech leads. Scrum masters usually don't have technical or product experience. I think some product managers just hire scrum masters to do their grunt work.
For me, scrum masters have always been regular members of the team who had the added responsible of organizing the meta-scrum aspects of the work. They scheduled the planning, retro, etc meetings as well as set up the task board once work was decided upon. They made sure meetings and stand-ups were running smoothly and stayed on point.
I could see where a person whose entire job description was "scrum master" would seem superfluous, but I have yet to work somewhere where that was the case.
Re: Seven Things I Hate About Agile
#50The thing that doesn't work for me in Agile: being treated like a baby and spoon fed little bits of work with little room for responsibility, initiative, creativity and a personal touch. Agile is great if you are a mediocre manager and you want to run a place full of replaceable cogs, but not so great if you want a place that pushes the boundaries and consistently goes the extra mile
The thing that doesn't work for me in Agile: being treated like a baby and spoon fed little bits of work with little room for responsibility, initiative, creativity and a personal touch.
For the "agile" teams I've worked on, the developers have had the most input as to the breakdown of tasks compared to anyone else. So, no one was "spoon-feeding" me work. I would see what the goal of a feature would be and the team would discuss the best way to break that feature up so that work could be done.