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Just Build It...

blog.stephaniestimac.com

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Re: Just Build It...

#21

Post by kordlessagain »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #20
keyle wrote: post #12

"also don't ever give someone an unsolicited code review on Twitter. It's rude." I'd personally welcome people's free code review, on any platform, when clearly the code "wasn't perfect". I don't see why someone would take offence from free advice, unless it was condescending. You're always free to ignore it. Eitherway, you won't excel in any topic without feedback.

People on Twitter just want to broadcast their opinion and get affirmation, they don't react well to attempts at dialog. It's all just attacks and counter attacks these days.

Just X it.

Re: Just Build It...

#22

Post by cogman10 »

lmm wrote: post #11
cogman10 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that big messes can be made that are hard to clean up in one small release. For example, one of our teams had the requirement "Allow end users to programmatically configure widget xyz". Now, widget xyz has a janky design and a table with 50 columns associated with it. So what did this team do? They took that internal table definition, made a CRUD api that exposes the whole thing, and moved on. Tell me, h…

> Tell me, how do you fix something like that like that? A little at a time; continuous refactoring/improvement is a vital pillar of agile. You've got 50 redundant fields that can be inferred but you have to understand the domain to do that? Well, understand the domain a bit, and infer one of them. Then next time you come back to that part of the code do another one. (I mean, if the table was like that already then i…

> continuous refactoring/improvement is a vital pillar of agile.

The problem with this pillar is it's often viewed as nothing more than waste by business. Try arguing with a PM "Hey, we need to actually take a bit of time to redo XYZ because it's really janky" and they'll come back with "Yes, but client PDQ is ready to give us money for this shiny new feature! We don't have time to waste redoing XYZ because it's not currently causing us any problems".

The table going from 1, 2, 10, 20, 50 columns never actually hurt the system. It got nasty looking but ultimately not something you could sell to a manager "Hey, we should address this". So, by the time "Hey, let's expose this" rolled around the institutional will to want to correct anything had long since past.

It's really easy to sell redoing something if it's actively causing harm to the systems, but stuff that's just a bit janky has next to 0 priority (often even negative priority because fixing it might break something).

Re: Just Build It...

#23

Post by brailsafe »

rlayton2 wrote: post #9
paulddraper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing gets shipped unless it's perfect, and so nothing gets iterated on Wow that is literally the exact opposite of agile. Like.... There is no worse descriptor for this than "agile"

I might have read it wrong, but I read OP as saying something like "people want to do agile, but wait until the project is perfect, thereby negating the whole point".

Not so much the overall project, but definitely the smaller components within an ongoing project. Probably should have specified that because I'm almost always working on an established thing, rather than a greenfield thing.

Re: Just Build It...

#25

Post by cogman10 »

brailsafe wrote: post #8
cogman10 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that big messes can be made that are hard to clean up in one small release. For example, one of our teams had the requirement "Allow end users to programmatically configure widget xyz". Now, widget xyz has a janky design and a table with 50 columns associated with it. So what did this team do? They took that internal table definition, made a CRUD api that exposes the whole thing, and moved on. Tell me, h…

Well I suppose that's the difference between thoughtful systems and process and zero systems and process, and also poor problem definition. There is some nuance between "ship literally anything to end users" and "ship an improvement" or something else to end users, or to a beta that roles out to end users and isolates the possible regression to a smaller surface area. It also seems like those developers might either…

> It also seems like those developers might either suck (possible, but uncharitable), or that the system rewards the wrong things.

Yes, they do, but also it's an entire department problem and one that the upper bureaucracy doesn't see as an issue. I'm really not surprised this was the route that particular department took. Office politics are fun, though, so sucking at your job often doesn't mean anything if your managers are all buddies.

But before the creation/evolution of that department we already had these sorts of problems. This may just be a "just my company" problem but I don't think it is. After all, from what I know of business management, this sort of "extra staff and rework is waste" mentality seems really pervasive.

Re: Just Build It...

#26

Post by pcthrowaway »

keyle wrote: post #12

"also don't ever give someone an unsolicited code review on Twitter. It's rude." I'd personally welcome people's free code review, on any platform, when clearly the code "wasn't perfect". I don't see why someone would take offence from free advice, unless it was condescending. You're always free to ignore it. Eitherway, you won't excel in any topic without feedback.

I think the point is that it's on Twitter.

Sending an email directly may be welcome. Commenting on PR (if open source) is also probably welcome in most circumstances.

It's the difference between pointing at an ESL speaker and saying they talk funny in a group social situation, versus pulling them aside and letting them know they're using some words wrong.

Some people are OK with being publicly called out, but more people will feel like they're being given constructive feedback rather than publicly called out if you talk to them directly

Re: Just Build It...

#27

Post by lmm »

cogman10 wrote: post #22
lmm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me, how do you fix something like that like that? A little at a time; continuous refactoring/improvement is a vital pillar of agile. You've got 50 redundant fields that can be inferred but you have to understand the domain to do that? Well, understand the domain a bit, and infer one of them. Then next time you come back to that part of the code do another one. (I mean, if the table was like that already then i…

> continuous refactoring/improvement is a vital pillar of agile. The problem with this pillar is it's often viewed as nothing more than waste by business. Try arguing with a PM "Hey, we need to actually take a bit of time to redo XYZ because it's really janky" and they'll come back with "Yes, but client PDQ is ready to give us money for this shiny new feature! We don't have time to waste redoing XYZ because it's not…

There's a balance to be had - and frankly most code has a finite lifetime and developers often put too much priority on making it cleaner than it needs to be. The technical debt metaphor is a good one; a PM should understand that when code isn't clean it increases the cost of making changes to that code, and sometimes that's a price you want to pay and sometimes you don't.

Re: Just Build It...

#28

Post by siva7 »

rlayton2 wrote: post #9
paulddraper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing gets shipped unless it's perfect, and so nothing gets iterated on Wow that is literally the exact opposite of agile. Like.... There is no worse descriptor for this than "agile"

I might have read it wrong, but I read OP as saying something like "people want to do agile, but wait until the project is perfect, thereby negating the whole point".

I’ve never seen that behaviour in the wild and i’ve seen over hundred teams adopting agile.

Re: Just Build It...

#29

Post by ReactiveJelly »

keyle wrote: post #12

"also don't ever give someone an unsolicited code review on Twitter. It's rude." I'd personally welcome people's free code review, on any platform, when clearly the code "wasn't perfect". I don't see why someone would take offence from free advice, unless it was condescending. You're always free to ignore it. Eitherway, you won't excel in any topic without feedback.

But if you welcome it, it's not unsolicited

Re: Just Build It...

#30

Post by indeedmug »

brailsafe wrote: post #3
kingforaday wrote: post #2

"One group is instructed to submit 100 photos over the quarter and the other group is instructed to submit one perfect photo. The group that is instructed to submit 100 photos gets better because they start right away and start taking photos and learn about composition. While the other group doesn't get better because they hem and haw over what a perfect photo is." If true, I would want a refund if placed in the latt…

Ironically, this is also the downfall of most "agile" practicing dev teams. They've adopted scrum, they've adopted all the overhead of Jira and 2 week sprints that they never rethink, but nothing gets shipped unless it's perfect, and so nothing gets iterated on, nothing progresses, no evaluation of the work ever actually feeds back into a positive reinforcement cycle, and so you just get waterfall with much more agon…

Your team's process should be flexible enough where you don't have a name for it.
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