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Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

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Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#61

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Agile's great. But somewhere up the chain of command, it runs into somebody who views the world through 17-page PERT charts. At that point, there's an impedance mismatch. The "agile" tools help the boss feel better, even if they're a complete misunderstanding of agile. (This is not a trivial problem, by the way. A boss several layers up who doesn't get the expected reports can decide that your project is floundering, no matter how well things are going in reality.)

But you can hit an impedance mismatch before that. You can hit it within your team, if you have developers who think in terms of following procedures instead of in terms of working code that creates value for the user.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#62

Post by myg204 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #51
MartinCron wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To torture the armory metaphor further, there are also land mines that you would want to avoid to keep from getting limbs blown off. In that metaphor, traditional waterfall is a land mine filled with plutonium shrapnel and anthrax spores.

Well, unless when it isn't. Some times you have a clear and well understood problem, and failures are very expensive. You'd be crazy to work on such kinds of environments with anything but waterfall.

Correct. One can see that very well defined in the NASA/JPL software guidance documents. Definitely not agile, but works for their situation.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#63

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #17
jarrett wrote: post #11

In the trenches, methodologies don't get projects done. Dave Thomas's original description of agility seems an accurate description of how code actually gets made--and that description is deliberately not a description of a methodology. I ship working code every day, and my clients are happy, despite the fact that I'm not following any definable methodology. Coding is a messy process. Codebases evolve in many ways: T…

What is it that keeps you shipping working code every day? That's not the state of nature, you've clearly made some kind of decision to do that. 80% of agile can be summed up as: limit work in progress, and (almost as a necessary consequence of this) ensure any given piece of work can go from initial requirement to deployed to customer very quickly. My "in the trenches" experience is that whether or not a company fol…

[deleted]

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#64

Post by stcredzero »

jarrett wrote: post #11

In the trenches, methodologies don't get projects done. Dave Thomas's original description of agility seems an accurate description of how code actually gets made--and that description is deliberately not a description of a methodology. I ship working code every day, and my clients are happy, despite the fact that I'm not following any definable methodology. Coding is a messy process. Codebases evolve in many ways: T…

You obviously have a process. It's just that you haven't formalized it yet and/or that it's too convoluted to be easily expressed in a marketable form for most human beings.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#65

Post by bpyne »

jarrett wrote: post #30
nahname wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is your team?

One team varies from three to six people. Another has maybe 20. The larger team definitely produces more intermediate artifacts than the smaller team. You could say there's more process in that team. But it's still not formalized as a methodology. The larger team mostly just muddles along. I'd actually prefer to organize the larger team's tools a little better, e.g. maintaining a single, sane VCS. Even if we did that…

Teams beyond a certain size seem to require some intermediate artifacts. (Bill Joy described an ideal-sized team to be the number of people who can sit comfortably around a dinner table: so 3-6 is fairly perfect for his definition.) It seems like small teams can just keep each other in sync with quick conversations. They seem to be able to keep the design and requirements in mind at all times. Maybe it's the scope of what they're trying to solve or maybe it's some residual overhead that larger teams create due to additional communication "friction". I'm not sure. It's interesting though.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#66

Post by MartinCron »

marcosdumay wrote: post #51
MartinCron wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To torture the armory metaphor further, there are also land mines that you would want to avoid to keep from getting limbs blown off. In that metaphor, traditional waterfall is a land mine filled with plutonium shrapnel and anthrax spores.

Well, unless when it isn't. Some times you have a clear and well understood problem, and failures are very expensive. You'd be crazy to work on such kinds of environments with anything but waterfall.

I believe that clear and well understood problems with expensive failures actually exist, but are rare enough that the lessons there aren't really instructive for the vast majority of professional software developers.

Some people have to do underwater welding, but the methodologies there aren't appropriate for building cabinets, even though they are both types of construction.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#67

Post by gutnor »

marcosdumay wrote: post #54
gutnor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrum is agile. You are not supposed to implement everything that's in it - even better, you are supposed to pick one stuff at a time if you face the specific problem the new stuff is supposed to solve. Adding/Removing stuff is the whole purpose of the retrospective, the last feedback loop of scrum, feedback on the process itself. That should be the first thing you add and the last thing you remove. "By-the-book" scr…

I hate doing that, but: RUP is agile. You are not supposed to implement everything that's in it - even better, you are supposed to pick one stuff at a time if you face the specific problem the new stuff is supposed to solve. Don't you really see a problem on describing a ton of rigid procedures, that only work well in concert, and expect people to "pick just the ones that are usefull, be reasonable"?

> a ton of rigid procedures, that only work well in concert

That is your problem right there.

7 years ago, scrum was taught as a toolbox. Each "procedure" had a goal. Reaching the goal mattered, not following a recipe like a lemming. It was for example perfectly reasonable to get rid of the daily standup in a 3 members team, if you have plenty of interaction with others already. The core of the methodology fitted in a single page.

All the above FYI only, no need to call the True Scotsman to the rescue, I'm convinced: from the other comments, scrum looks more like Prince2 than anything else.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#68

Post by bowlofpetunias »

MartinCron wrote: post #27
jbondeson wrote: post #16

Repeat after me: "Scrum is Agile, but Agile is not Scrum" The Agile Manifesto is a simple set of 4 values and 12 principles to aid in building software, that's it. The different signers of the manifesto had different visions of implementing it, Schwaber's was Scrum, Beck's was XP. Saying that a particular methodology isn't a silver bullet therefore it's Agile's fault is a bit like saying science is dead when we dispr…

I don't even agree that Scrum is agile. It's a one-size-fits-all prescriptive methodology with rigidly defined schedules, rituals, and roles. If I had the memory erasing device from the Men In Black movies, I would use it on people who advocate for by-the-book scrum.

I advocate by-the-book-scrum for two cases:

a) To get a collective frame of reference going, especially if the team is not just 3 dudes who already know each other.

b) The most open and direct way possible to confront a disfunctional organization with all the elements (mostly, people) that stop them from being agile.

Of course, once you get into the swing of things, take off the training wheels and fuck Scrum.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#69

Post by MartinCron »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #68
MartinCron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even agree that Scrum is agile. It's a one-size-fits-all prescriptive methodology with rigidly defined schedules, rituals, and roles. If I had the memory erasing device from the Men In Black movies, I would use it on people who advocate for by-the-book scrum.

I advocate by-the-book-scrum for two cases: a) To get a collective frame of reference going, especially if the team is not just 3 dudes who already know each other. b) The most open and direct way possible to confront a disfunctional organization with all the elements (mostly, people) that stop them from being agile. Of course, once you get into the swing of things, take off the training wheels and fuck Scrum.

The only reason I would be hesitant to do that would be the baggage that the term "scrum" has with so many good people. If someone hears me talking about scrum/agile/whatever and I remind them of the last snake oil infused zealot they worked with, I have immediately lost some credibility.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#70

Post by vehementi »

jarrett wrote: post #35
Stratoscope wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you must be kidding about the "hammer-centric methodology": Do companies actually say they have a "tool-centric methodology"? Then I remembered one I saw just the other day: > We offer a highly configurable Agile and tools-based software development methodology They also have an "execution-focused leadership team" and "offer a number of flexible outcome-oriented engagement models assuring the success of our…

Wow. I've always wondered: Is this kind of empty, buzzwordy writing effective? Does it sell? So many companies write this way. I could believe they do so only because their staff never learned how to write good sales copy. Or is there some actual merit to it? Do they know something I don't--namely, that buzzwords sell?

I think it's a joke, just based on the obvious word reuse:

> We are an innovation focused services firm with 100% focus in the emerging technologies. This razor sharp focus has allowed us to differentiate from our competitors in many different ways:

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