Agile is Poisonous • Hacker News Board

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#11

Post by jph » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 2:11 PM UTC

+1 Funny. Congrats on walking the fine line of parody and realism!

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#12

Post by Killah911 » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 2:13 PM UTC

Nicely done, at first I was in disbelief, but then realized that it's satire. It's unfortunate that I know of companies that have implemented so-called "agile" and basically didn't even get what the heck it was supposed to be.

1-2 week sprints, Mini-waterfall, bringing back deadlines. I've actually been thru this kind of "fr-aglie" implementation by bone headed leaders who were aware of the buzzwords and hadn't carefully examined what the process(es) entailed.

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#13

Post by static_typed » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 2:14 PM UTC

api wrote: post #2

"We tried 1 week and 2 weeks iterations. Neither worked out. With short iterations there was a constant pressure to get shit done and technical debt accumulated like a huge garbage heap. It is impossible to squeeze a good solution into a short timeframe." This is the most common Agile failure mode I've seen. You have to finish by the end of the iteration, so you're very heavily biased toward ugly hacks and Rube Goldb…

This is common in a lot of Rails shops - they are so proud of the extensive Cucumber tests, of the endless gems required just to run the tests, of the layer-upon-layer of crap, and look all the tests passed, it must be good right?

Wrong. The worst code I have ever seen. Written to pass tests, unmaintainable, fragile as hell due to the turtles-all-the-way-down architecture of relying on a thousand-and-one third party gems (and the checkins showing how frequently that very same code barfed and broke 'vital' things').

Agile is a pox upon software development, but hey, it sells books, provides employment for otherwise unemployable 'project managers' and finally putting to rest any semblance of engineering in software and systems today.

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#14

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

I thought this was hilarious, especially that on 'blame day' you couldn't defend yourself in Nerf battles. It left me wondering "Ok, what are these folks trying to do?" and then "Oh, he's one of the founders of http://www.targetprocess.com/ , I get it."

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#15

Post by tablet » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 6:14 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #8

myke_cameron wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree, but I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a parody...if not then this is truly absurd.

It's definitely a parody, but it's disturbing how many seeds of truth are in there.

I think every good parody has some truth.

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#16

Post by tablet » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 6:15 PM UTC

Killah911 wrote: post #12

Nicely done, at first I was in disbelief, but then realized that it's satire. It's unfortunate that I know of companies that have implemented so-called "agile" and basically didn't even get what the heck it was supposed to be. 1-2 week sprints, Mini-waterfall, bringing back deadlines. I've actually been thru this kind of "fr-aglie" implementation by bone headed leaders who were aware of the buzzwords and hadn't caref…

Thanks, I've tried my best :)

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#17

Post by tablet » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 6:17 PM UTC

api wrote: post #2

"We tried 1 week and 2 weeks iterations. Neither worked out. With short iterations there was a constant pressure to get shit done and technical debt accumulated like a huge garbage heap. It is impossible to squeeze a good solution into a short timeframe." This is the most common Agile failure mode I've seen. You have to finish by the end of the iteration, so you're very heavily biased toward ugly hacks and Rube Goldb…

I believe the resulting situation is not what you should blame agile for. Shitty code created by shitty developers. No exceptions.

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#18

Post by api » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 6:33 PM UTC

tablet wrote: post #17

api wrote: post #2

"We tried 1 week and 2 weeks iterations. Neither worked out. With short iterations there was a constant pressure to get shit done and technical debt accumulated like a huge garbage heap. It is impossible to squeeze a good solution into a short timeframe." This is the most common Agile failure mode I've seen. You have to finish by the end of the iteration, so you're very heavily biased toward ugly hacks and Rube Goldb…

I believe the resulting situation is not what you should blame agile for. Shitty code created by shitty developers. No exceptions.

Good developers can only write good code if they can think and plan. Neither of these is ever a sprint objective. The objective of a sprint -- in practice -- is always to bang out the absolutely minimal quality hack required to complete the sprint's objectives.

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#19

Post by emarutian » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 7:34 PM UTC

irukavina wrote: post #10

This is obviously an April Fools joke :-)))

yep

Re: Agile is Poisonous

#20

Post by tablet » Mon, Apr 01, 2013, 7:57 PM UTC

api wrote: post #18

tablet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the resulting situation is not what you should blame agile for. Shitty code created by shitty developers. No exceptions.

Good developers can only write good code if they can think and plan. Neither of these is ever a sprint objective. The objective of a sprint -- in practice -- is always to bang out the absolutely minimal quality hack required to complete the sprint's objectives.

Nothing distracts good developers to write good code. There is NO excuses. Bad management? Bad mood? Fuck it. Find another job if management can't live with good solutions. Again. No excuses.