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Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

pragdave.me

81–90 of 117 posts

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#81

Dave didn't seem to mind cashing the checks he got for all the "agile" books his company published. This piece would have been interesting in, say, 2008, but now he's just riding the wave.

From what I can see none of his own books are actually about "Agile". In fact "Agile development with Rails" is probably the only one that used that word in the title, and I can't really fault him for taking advantage. Also he wrote some quite good books, 'Pragmatic Thinking and Learning' come to mind. I don't think your comment is particularly fair, nor does it diminish the point he is making in any way even if you'…

"Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" was Andy Hunt, but as he and Dave Thomas are kind of a double act I can see why you'd get mixed up.

As to your point about whether they wrote any books on 'agile' I think it could be argued either way. More specifically, whether or not "The Pragmatic Programmer" (the book they made their name with) counts as a book about 'agile' is an interesting question, and one that throws some light on the wider debate.

Although they sometimes talk about "pragmatic programming" as if it were a thing, in the same way as XP and Scrum, their approach was more one of giving a smorgasbord of potentially useful techniques and practices rather than codifying a tightly defined set of best practices.

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#82

Disagree. Language is not an immutable thing and is always evolving in its use to reflect the concepts of the people using it. I think capitalizing Agile as a noun makes it a "thing" that we can refer to collectively and ultimately helps us communicate about the concepts that it entails. The unfortunate down-side is when a popular term is misused due to ignorance and misunderstanding by a large group of people - whic…

The problem with Scrum is it is rarely about principles and more about a process. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with that, but generally speaking, there are no one size fits all processes that will work for (or "fix") every business and team out there. If it's really working for you and your team, that's great though. But there really isn't anything magic about Scrum. It's not the silver bullet many…

>The problem with Scrum is it is rarely about principles and more about a process.

I was thinking this recently about agile. Lots of "agile" followers seem to advocate a lot of process SCRUM, or "always do TDD".

Does the Agile manifesto not say: "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".

Basically these people are doing the opposite.

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#84
post #7

I 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…

This reminds me of the team best advice someone ever gave me. "People. Process. Technology. In that order."

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#85
post #6
post #3

Personally 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…

I am not sure I agree with that first point, having been involved in a short project, that just became one monstrous exercise in feature creep. That was essentially taking small steps in the right direction, but it never finished.

I think it is beneficial to have a plan in certain situations.

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#86
There is some truth in this post.

However I still thank the Agile "industry and business" as it allowed me to open my eyes as a developer years ago.

Because believe it or not, some of the so called master/consultant are genuinely caring about the values behind the manifesto, and putting a lot of efforts into improving everyone practice of software development.

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#87
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of that article is that you need to be self reflective and open to change. I'll post it here again, without any of the other distracting things he said about verbs and so on. Just take a moment to think about what these steps actually mean: - Find out where you are - Take a small step towards your goal - Adjust your understanding based on what you learned - Repeat If you want to work as effectively as you c…

This reminds me of the OODA loop: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop I think this concept also describes the essence of "agile" well (along with the four points you quote).

Oh, the scientific method is great, isn't it?

It's new tech, just from the XIV century... It would be great if people were that up to date.

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#88
post #45
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I disagree. The large part (possibly not the intent) was about building a consulting empire around something utterly vague with multiple religious opinions about the best way to perform these manifesto actions. A vehicle for rats.

The original meaning of agile, the manifesto, was doing it right. The consultants jumped on the bandwagon and called themselves agile until it stuck. But I don't think the right response is to say agile is now bad, it's to reclaim the word from those who're misusing it.

Good luck.

I don't think a missused word was ever reclaimed, in any language. But while you are on that path, can you do something about "hacker" too? (Or maybe you should start with the easier, less valuable "ordinary" and "literaly".)

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#89
post #7

I 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…

The point of that article is that you need to be self reflective and open to change. I'll post it here again, without any of the other distracting things he said about verbs and so on. Just take a moment to think about what these steps actually mean: - Find out where you are - Take a small step towards your goal - Adjust your understanding based on what you learned - Repeat If you want to work as effectively as you c…

[deleted]

Re: Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

#90
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can see none of his own books are actually about "Agile". In fact "Agile development with Rails" is probably the only one that used that word in the title, and I can't really fault him for taking advantage. Also he wrote some quite good books, 'Pragmatic Thinking and Learning' come to mind. I don't think your comment is particularly fair, nor does it diminish the point he is making in any way even if you'…

"Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" was Andy Hunt, but as he and Dave Thomas are kind of a double act I can see why you'd get mixed up. As to your point about whether they wrote any books on 'agile' I think it could be argued either way. More specifically, whether or not "The Pragmatic Programmer" (the book they made their name with) counts as a book about 'agile' is an interesting question, and one that throws some li…

Sorry you're right, I don't know why I thought that was Dave.
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