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Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

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Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#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: They advance by leaps and bounds, they stagnate, they regress, they sputter along, they bloat--often all at the same time. Sometimes you write tests first, sometimes you code first. Sometimes you whiteboard first, sometimes you write up a detailed spec. How do you know what strategy to adopt at any given moment? You can try to formalize it all you want, but in reality, the choice is usually made on intuition.

That last point--the key role of intuition--is one of the biggest reasons you can't package up effective coding as a book, a manifesto, or a training session. Which implies something managers may find distressing: There is no silver bullet; a coding team's only salvation is smart coders.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#13
Heh, from my experience if the company has 'Certified Scrum Masters' they will try to apply everything they learned (while pinning their certificate to the wall for everybody to see) into development process.

They are usually so clueless that the concept of thinking outside the box and adjusting what they 'learned' from book/seminar is unknown to them.

So if company you want to work for has a 'SCRUM MASTER', do your self a favor and run.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#15
post #2

I've seen this cycle a few times. Let me handwave how it goes: * Agile Critisism: The snake oil is all over and getting worse! * Agilista: It's not done properly ! * Agile Criticism: No True Scotsman! I think the NTS is where things usually leave the line and end up in a lot of splutters and anecdotes. Sometimes I wonder if the great flamewars and their arguments should be canonized into standard textfiles and passed…

In this guy's defense, there is a lot of Fake Agile out there. People (business people, project managers, mostly) seem to think that Agile means using a new set of buzzwords. Standups? They're daily status reports to management, right?

Standups? They're daily status reports to management, right?

More importantly, they're daily status reports to each others, internally to your team.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#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 disprove a theory.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#17
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 follows this is the most accurate single predictor of whether it succeeds. So methodologies do, in fact, get projects done.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#18
post #2

I've seen this cycle a few times. Let me handwave how it goes: * Agile Critisism: The snake oil is all over and getting worse! * Agilista: It's not done properly ! * Agile Criticism: No True Scotsman! I think the NTS is where things usually leave the line and end up in a lot of splutters and anecdotes. Sometimes I wonder if the great flamewars and their arguments should be canonized into standard textfiles and passed…

This seems illogically dismissive, unless you're criticizing the lack of actual discourse instead of the critics as a group, which I'm not really clear on. It comes off as "The Other Side has nothing to go on but insults and logical fallacies."

Um, which "side" of that conversation do you think is being dismissive?

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#19
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this guy's defense, there is a lot of Fake Agile out there. People (business people, project managers, mostly) seem to think that Agile means using a new set of buzzwords. Standups? They're daily status reports to management, right?

Standups? They're daily status reports to management, right? More importantly, they're daily status reports to each others , internally to your team.

Right. So one of the main smells of an ineffective methodology is going through the same motions but not realizing the intent of each action.

Some examples: standups becoming daily status reports, the customer demo becoming it's own production, and let's not get started on retrospectives.

Re: Agile Is Dead: The Angry Developer Version

#20
post #17
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…

> 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.

Good question. If you mean: "Why do you choose to ship code?" then I suppose it's my desire to please my clients and stay employed. If you mean: "How do you manage it?" then it's what I hinted at earlier: Good intuition, experience, a precise and logical mind, and thoughtful use of tools.

About tools: My tools are important to me, but I don't see them as a silver bullet. It's like if you asked a carpenter about a "hammer-centric methodology." She would laugh. She'd say yeah, she uses a hammer all the time, but her hammer use doesn't amount to a methodology or a philosophy. Hammer use just comes about naturally as a consequence of recognizing nails that must be driven in.

Similarly for software: I don't use to-do lists because they're "agile." I use them because I need to remember the 20 different requests my client made yesterday. Could I live without Asana, Basecamp, or what have you? Sure. I'd just write my tasks in a text file. What if I couldn't use a text file? Then I'd put sticky notes on my wall. I need tools (everyone does), but I don't deify them.

> 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 follows this is the most accurate single predictor of whether it succeeds. So methodologies do, in fact, get projects done.

I agree with all of the above except for the statement that "methodologies do, in fact, get projects done." I think the reason we disagree is that we mean different things by "methodology." I take "methodology" to mean a formalized process, like a recipe, that you can follow mechanically. By that definition, agility is the explicit rejection of methodologies.

But then, I'm not the god of word definitions. I don't get to say my definition of "methodology" is right and yours is wrong. So perhaps it's fair to say that we're each right insofar as we're permitted our respective definitions of "methodology."

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