That seems unlikely. Big companies like big ships have a lot of inertia. They may adapt "Agile", but almost certainly in name only.
IBM Is Going Agile
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Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#12That seems unlikely. Big companies like big ships have a lot of inertia. They may adapt "Agile", but almost certainly in name only.
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#13Alternate headline: "Agile Development Ski-Jumps Over Shark!" Alternate alternate headline: "Final Nail in Agile Development Coffin is Big and Blue." Agile is dead. Long live the new development process buzzwords. It is now time again to rename everything, come up with new jargon and trademarks to describe the patterns and anti-patterns of the development processes that actually work for us, and set those words free.…
Scrum/Agile-English Dictionary http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/594955.html
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#14I'd trust this all more if it was coming from the teams back up, rather than edict going down.
Agreed. I hope that this involves empowering team leads to find best practices that work for their engineers.
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#15If IBM didn't use Agile, what did they use? The non-greedy benefit of Agile is that work and how work happens becomes more understandable in a consistent and reasonably-well studied manner.
"Waterfall" with detailed project schedules in tools like MS-Project (which BTW, is still useful for all-process oriented projects). I'm a little confused by the article since the parts of IBM I've seen have been using Agile for years (scrums, iterations, epics/themes/stories).
I'm part of a team within IBM that's been using Agile (Scrum) for the last 6 years.
Originally it was just quite close to Waterfall dressed up as Agile but "they" (senior management) are finally getting their heads around it.
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#16Alternate headline: "Agile Development Ski-Jumps Over Shark!" Alternate alternate headline: "Final Nail in Agile Development Coffin is Big and Blue." Agile is dead. Long live the new development process buzzwords. It is now time again to rename everything, come up with new jargon and trademarks to describe the patterns and anti-patterns of the development processes that actually work for us, and set those words free.…
So, just to be clear, the fact that it's being used by a big company, and/or referred to in the WSJ means it's useless?
I didn't say the process is useless. That remains to be seen. My point was that the events described in the article have stretched the meaning of Agile so far that it can now be used to describe any software development process at all, regardless of whether it actually conforms to the principles that originally inspired Agile.
Agile can now mean anything. Therefore it means nothing.
The new IBM process won't be entirely useless. It will likely be very expensive for IBM consulting customers and slightly damaging to the souls of the software professionals required to use it. It will be the IBM development process, with a new set of names and jargon terms.
Imagine, for example, that the new development process is called Celeriflex. All the SV startups jump on Celeriflex like fleamen on a Belmont. They crank out awesome software and make huge exits. Some of those startup veterans use their payout to create consultancies to teach Celeriflex to other software businesses. They make money hand over fist. Then businesses whose primary product is not software notice. Their management hears good things about Celeriflex and orders the CTO/CIO to implement it. Eventually, the largest companies for whom software is a significant source of revenue keep doing what they have been doing for decades and use words culled from Celeriflex consultant documentation to describe it. At that point, Celeriflex is dead. The SV startups are using Speedcode now...
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#17I worked at IBM for 5 years, and some of the teams I was on used "agile" development methods. In that they used the names, but our "scrums" were an hour long, in a meeting room, with everyone bringing their laptop. Management more than 1 level up expected waterfall-like development, so it all just meshed badly.
I really don't hold out much hope that this is going to work out that well without a whole bunch of training and people actually wanting it.
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#18That seems unlikely. Big companies like big ships have a lot of inertia. They may adapt "Agile", but almost certainly in name only.
This was the case in my few months there. We had "sprints" and "stories" but 75% of all the stories in every sprint would just get pushed to the next sprint with no thought behind it. Part of that was because our stories themselves were so broad and were worked in a long term waterfall manner. Our standups were just everyone falling asleep while each person took their turn saying what they did the previous day. If someone did actually have impediments or useful information to convey, most did not pay attention enough to notice. And finally, we didn't have retrospectives, which are a great time to be able to reflect on how to improve as a team and prevent issues in the future.
A lot of this came down to the people, but it didn't help that there was no leadership to help steer it in a good direction or notice the underlying issues. Story points were fabricated to help give good spreadsheets and charts to upper management, which led to us working insane overtime before our release due to how behind we were.
This is just one anecdote though, and I know there were other departments much better off than mine was. It was enough for me to want to get out though after I realized how difficult it was to get any change in place.
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#19Alternate headline: "Agile Development Ski-Jumps Over Shark!" Alternate alternate headline: "Final Nail in Agile Development Coffin is Big and Blue." Agile is dead. Long live the new development process buzzwords. It is now time again to rename everything, come up with new jargon and trademarks to describe the patterns and anti-patterns of the development processes that actually work for us, and set those words free.…
So, just to be clear, the fact that it's being used by a big company, and/or referred to in the WSJ means it's useless?
Inside their comment, I think there is a point that's pretty interesting: New buzzwords will be formed because there are a lot of shops that simply won't do something the way that IBM or (Microsoft for that matter) does. In other words, there are a lot of shops where if the conversation contains "...the way Microsoft organizes" or "...the way IBM plans their projects" it will immediately be a no-go, but if you call the same process "underscore projecting" and say a lot of startups use it, it will be considered.
Re: IBM Is Going Agile
#20Enterprise companies are all going agile this year, I bet someone from Gartner is suggesting this shift... and the result is clearly not that effective.