Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
pragdave.me
Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
1–10 of 117 posts
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#2Spot on. The word 'Agile', much like 'Big Data' has been misappropriated by marketers, who don't really understand it, the world over.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#3Personally I find that this line "Responding to Change over Following a Plan" does much more harm than good. It should read "You should have a plan but should rather be prepared to change it constantly than stick with it dogmatically".
I would say that when you are within a project team it should emphasize the agile values but once you are on an organizational level where several project teams need to co-operate to deliver a product the constraints given to teams should be formalized over the right hand side, strongly, but in a way that is ready to take immediate feedback from the realities. Preferably, my dream system would be formed of strong spec based contracts between teams, enforced by automatic tools and architects, who work as part of feature teams implementing features and have the ownership of the spec-framework and can swiftly change it to respond to changes.
Completely forgoing specs and plans leads to anarchy and headache where the only two-channel communication with developers is facilitated by broken unit tests and system-test or (the horror) customer side regressions.
Good software systems are composed through a firmly kept set of as strong constraints as possible, IMO, and someone needs to own the constraints.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#4The problem is real but changing the word won't solve it - we'll just repeat the same cycle all over again.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#5It's become another buzzword. Another phrase for people to throw at each other.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#6Personally I find that this line "Responding to Change over Following a Plan" does much more harm than good. It should read "You should have a plan but should rather be prepared to change it constantly than stick with it dogmatically". I would say that when you are within a project team it should emphasize the agile values but once you are on an organizational level where several project teams need to co-operate to d…
I think this hits the most interesting point. Personally I agree with the article that the best way to develop efficiently is to continually take small steps in the right direction and reevaluate where you are after each one - you save a lot of time by not planning things you don't need that way and it's much easier to maintain focus. But against that, people need estimates for how long projects will take and how much they will cost, and that demands a plan.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#7I found that no methodology works as well as getting the right people in and let them organise themselves. If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter what methodology or process you bring in, you're screwed.
On that basis, methodology isn't that relevant.
I just watched a company apply SCRUM to apparently solve process problems and it just made things worse because the staff aren't disciplined or interested in what they do.
That's after five years of agile consultants and perpetual change.
If you want a manifesto with real values:
1. Fix shit when it goes wrong right away.
2. Tell people what you are doing.
3. Write everything down somewhere centrally that everyone can get to(tickets)
4. Have a rough vision and make sure people are working towards it. Don't plan the details too much.
5. Be opinionated. Someone's got to win an argument.
that's it.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#8Yeah Agile is used as a way to make money now days. For what other reason there are Agile consultants, Agile agencies and Agile certification.
I firmly believe that Agile is about doing what makes sense in this team right now. You let the team to decide on their process, on their way of work and get away. And for good managers this is enough - you are empowering your team to succeed.
Recently I had a great success demolishing standups in our team. We clearly weren't getting enough value from them (I though they were plainly hurting us), so it was time for change. I had a great resistance from the management team, but some developers were keen to try a change (some of them were long enough in the industry to remember the pre-agile days, when we were delivering software too). So we tried it for some time, everybody loved it, and we stopped doing it completely.
Now days we all agree that iterative development is the way forward. We should also think if we can apply the same on a meta level - the team, the process, the product, the design, the organization. Do small steps, check if you are going into the right direction, repeat. It may work :)
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#9Personally I find that this line "Responding to Change over Following a Plan" does much more harm than good. It should read "You should have a plan but should rather be prepared to change it constantly than stick with it dogmatically". I would say that when you are within a project team it should emphasize the agile values but once you are on an organizational level where several project teams need to co-operate to d…
I think this hits the most interesting point. Personally I agree with the article that the best way to develop efficiently is to continually take small steps in the right direction and reevaluate where you are after each one - you save a lot of time by not planning things you don't need that way and it's much easier to maintain focus. But against that, people need estimates for how long projects will take and how muc…
"you save a lot of time by not planning things you don't need that way"
Yes, but on the other hand you will lose time if you do not plan those things ahead of time that you can plan ahead of time. It's much cheaper to catch ill defined requirements while planning on paper than once the constraints reach production and people start implementing features and tests based on them. Although you cannot plan _everything_ there is always _something_ you can plan - and should plan. Unless you have a spec or a plan at day 0, you do not have a documentation platform available when the shit invariably does hit the fan and you need to do the learning-organization-disco and facilitate a change to your product because some real world constraints were not known or acknowledged before hand.
Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)
#10I found that no methodology works as well as getting the right people in and let them organise themselves. If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter what methodology or process you bring in, you're screwed. On that basis, methodology isn't that relevant. I just watched a company apply SCRUM to apparently solve process problems and it just made things worse because the staff aren't disciplined or interested in w…
Well said.