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Scrum is the new waterfall

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Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#151

Post by snow_mac »

kaspm wrote: post #25

I don't understand why this is on the top of Hacker News. It seems to be one person's opinions and experiences about complex issues that face hundreds of thousands of engineers in thousands of companies across the world. Nothing in the article makes me trust this persons perspective over any other. It's not thoroughly investigated with metrics over many case studies. There's no empirical evidence to back up his asser…

Your right, I presented no evidence. Honestly it was a rhetorical post that I did not expect to strike the cord that it did.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#152

Post by rjspotter »

kuschku wrote: post #126
c23gooey wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you seem to be mistaken about what Agile actually is. i suggest reading the Agile manifesto [1] to get an understanding. [1] http://www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

I commented on it before in a sibling comment. Also, please link the actual manifesto, not the intention behind it. And that can be paraphrased as "People over tools", "Documentation doesn’t matter as long as it works", "Who needs a contract? Just collaborate with the customer!", "Plans? Why? Just follow the latest trends!" And I have to disagree with them in every single point. Documentation > Working Software (as o…

That is not Documentation that is Specification. How do you Document something that isn't built yet unless you have perfect foresight? Last I checked humans could not yet perfectly predict the future. Thus, the value of Working Software that can be interrogated and probed vs "Comprehensive Documentation" that may or may not be based on wishful prospection.

The Manifesto values Collaboration over "Contract Negotiation" leaving off the Negotiation part is a straw-man argument.

Similarly, "Responding to Change" it is not the Change that the Manifesto values it is "Responding to Change". What it values "Responding to Change" over is "Following a Plan" not making a plan or doing any planning.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#154

Post by snow_mac »

yexponential wrote: post #51
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #20

As I experienced Scrum in practice, it is said that people should be "empowered". In reality, something totally different is happening: People are not empowered, but the management just delegates the responsibilities for the project to the developers and lays back, assured that they just have to wait for the "agile fruits" to be reaped. They have done everything, they could do, now the "empowered" employees have to s…

This. 1000x. This is definitely one of the pitfalls of poorly implemented scrum. For bigger companies, scrum tends to be a decision by the higher ups and implemented by the lower ranks keeping middle management is disarray over their role in the change. Moreover as the author mentions agile is about people first, but followed by processes. If scrum teams don't have the power, or empowerment, to change the processes,…

This is really the heart of it, I've really only worked in environments that have been top down as their implementation of scrum. When the engineer team got to decide, we picked Kanban. The lightest process for us.

Scrum top down. I buy that. Bottom up? I'd give it a try, but the team needs the ability to say "no".

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#155

Post by [deleted] »

kuschku wrote: post #35
sopooneo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What that is written in the Agile Manifesto precludes quality?

> Responding to change over following a plan Which, in reality, leads to everyone working on random things, just adding features and somehow patching bugs. But often refactoring the system, rewriting subsystems, etc is necessary. > Working software over comprehensive documentation If your software is working, but there is no documentation, this might work well for a website, but as soon as you go into control systems…

[deleted]

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#156

Post by mixmastamyk »

kuschku wrote: post #139
arclyte wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

I am using the definition from agilemanifesto.org, which argues that "change" is more important than planning what you actually want to do. Or that "it works" is more important than documenting it.

The problem that you argue is not a problem in reality.

When breaking changes are made to an API, the version number is simply incremented. It is up to requirements to decide how long older APIs will be supported.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#157

Post by kuschku »

parasubvert wrote: post #145
kuschku wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Agile works far better when you have constantly changing requirements, and when you will constantly work on the code. Agile works best when "development" and "maintenance" are the same. See: Chrome, Android. Disadvantages: 0 backwards compatibility, annoying for users (I’d love to force the people who made these decisions to try and use a 5 year old Android phone with modern apps, thanks to the cons…

I think we can resolve this debate through a map. I think our problem is a disagreement on what is actually industrialized and predictable vs. What is more exploratory and uncertain. Most software - but not all - deals with uncertain requirements. These are suited to agile methods. Other software is in a well understood industrialized domain. Here, I would not recommend waterfall per se, but an approach like Six Sigm…

Well, whatever Agile means in theory, in practice, it almost always leads to situations like the Android Update situation. Of the Google Chrome Update situation, which is only better because everyone is forced to update.

A situation like the Android update situation, though, is completely unacceptable for smoke detectors or other household devices.

No matter how good predictability is, the demand is that these devices are "buy once, just works™". So we need to write stable software for an unstable use case.

But in no case should we end up with serious devices having a support situation like Android, or the SAMSUNG smart devices.

Yes, it will only be written every few decades, but that is fine. It doesn't need to be a huge industry. Just like Washing Machines are mostly made by smaller enterprises.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#158

Post by kuschku »

rjspotter wrote: post #152
kuschku wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commented on it before in a sibling comment. Also, please link the actual manifesto, not the intention behind it. And that can be paraphrased as "People over tools", "Documentation doesn’t matter as long as it works", "Who needs a contract? Just collaborate with the customer!", "Plans? Why? Just follow the latest trends!" And I have to disagree with them in every single point. Documentation > Working Software (as o…

That is not Documentation that is Specification. How do you Document something that isn't built yet unless you have perfect foresight? Last I checked humans could not yet perfectly predict the future. Thus, the value of Working Software that can be interrogated and probed vs "Comprehensive Documentation" that may or may not be based on wishful prospection. The Manifesto values Collaboration over "Contract Negotiation…

Usually, you can decide on structure of code before implementing it. You can even have tests up and running before implementing it.

And in many cases this actually works.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#159

Post by kuschku »

parasubvert wrote: post #111
kuschku wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now imagine Healthcare.gov was Agile and its API would change every month completely. And then imagine how every insurance would complain and how, after 2 or 3 months, everyone depending on healthcare.gov would have stopped supporting it because after the third rewrite of the parts of their software interacting with healthcare.gov’s API they’ve gone mad. Every time you interact with third parties you have to prov…

"And now imagine Healthcare.gov was Agile and its API would change every month completely." This is not required by any Agile method that I have experienced. You can create a stable API and stick with it forever. If you know what you want/need. "Every time you interact with third parties you have to provide stable interfaces." Yes. Case in point, the Cloud Foundry APIs at http://apidocs.cloudfoundry.org are backwards…

It's not required, but the average Agile project ends up with update support like Android, and with a complexity like the Facebook Android App (which had to rewrite dalvik at runtime because they didn't plan about the limits of the VM they were working on).

Having a plan is the first step to perfection, they say.

Re: Scrum is the new waterfall

#160

Post by je42 »

If you got a bad development process it doesn't matter how you label it SCRUM, Waterfall or Kanban.

The main is issue is to implement SCRUM properly. If I have seen it both ways. The difference is like night and day.

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