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Agile Is a Tainted Term

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Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#21

Post by pydry »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #5
SPBS wrote: post #3

I wish more people understood this. Nobody should be arguing for Agile anymore. Don't say "no, but-" or "that is not what the Manifesto says-" because you're only strengthening the case for Agile as propagated by the fraudmasters simply by virtue of it sharing the same name as the thing you're arguing for. Leave the term behind, find something else.

The problem is that it's a neverending treadmill of naming if you do that. Every good idea will be taken over by fraudsters. A lot of good ideas are already tainted by this, and while you have to pick your battles, there's something to be said for standing your ground on naming.

The thing that made agile ripe for fraudsters/cargo cultists was how vaguely it was defined.

That can be fixed by defining something new, more precisely.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#22

Post by quectophoton »

The_Colonel wrote: post #10
quectophoton wrote: post #2

The closest I've found to agile is when a team says they use "extreme programming", but I still find it funny that even EP goes against the "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools", or at least walks a tightrope on whether it's a process or not.

I see people kind of assuming that this agile principle implies there should be no process at all. Do you make that assumption or where does the perceived contradiction come from?

Now that you point this out, I was actually making that assumption yes. My bad.

In my defense, I forgot about the fine print on the agile manifesto website.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#23

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

pydry wrote: post #21
GauntletWizard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's a neverending treadmill of naming if you do that. Every good idea will be taken over by fraudsters. A lot of good ideas are already tainted by this, and while you have to pick your battles, there's something to be said for standing your ground on naming.

The thing that made agile ripe for fraudsters/cargo cultists was how vaguely it was defined. That can be fixed by defining something new, more precisely.

> That can be fixed by defining something new, more precisely.

I do not think that we're going to find a single precisely-defined process that will work well for everyone.

The strength of the OG Agile thinking was the iterative, "inspect and adapt", "shorten the feedback cycle" thinking. Which is somewhat in opposition to your desire for a precisely defined process. The Agile manifesto specifically stated that "process" was one of the "items on the right" that had less value.

So what you propose is not a fix to it, it is a different mindset. It is process-first. And because it is a more rigid and inflexible, it is less suitable to the business of software.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#24

Post by Scubabear68 »

thimp wrote: post #12
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

I’ve seen agile done well once. Yes it does happen. The process was not described, spoken of or even considered. It just existed between a few like minded decent engineers. Their manager got an “agile PM” forced on them and it broke. The problem is charlatans, dictators and career ticket shufflers that deliver little to no ROI and generally abject chaos.

The charlatans are a serious problem in software engineering today.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#26

Post by quectophoton »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #19
The_Colonel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people kind of assuming that this agile principle implies there should be no process at all. Do you make that assumption or where does the perceived contradiction come from?

There is a human tendency for absolutes, black and white, binary, either-or thinking, and it seems to manifest no matter what. If this is happening here, this is a good example, as the front page of the Agile manifesto is laconically short, 10 lines of text ( https://agilemanifesto.org/ ) And includes the repeated formulation "x over y" - NB this is not "x, instead of y", not "x, not y" And then clarifies with "That…

Yeah, I only remembered the four main lines and was, uh, "pattern matching" with other language stuff.

More or less same mistake as (unfortunately) conflating "I don't like X" with "I dislike X", which also falls into into the black-and-white tendency you mentioned.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#27

Post by praptak »

hkt wrote: post #16
thimp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen agile done well once. Yes it does happen. The process was not described, spoken of or even considered. It just existed between a few like minded decent engineers. Their manager got an “agile PM” forced on them and it broke. The problem is charlatans, dictators and career ticket shufflers that deliver little to no ROI and generally abject chaos.

Exactly the same thing here. Once some interloper with paper qualifications and no tech background rocks up and says "this is how agile works!" you're doomed. The only time I've ever seen this not happen was when we had a 55 year old delivery manager who viewed his job as facilitating team meetings in a way that meant everyone got the chance to speak and that consensus formed. Didn't try to dictate process or anythin…

Organisations make it very hard to be that manager. On top of the human tendency to overmanage there's often push from top for "more visibility and accountability" which results in forcing stuff rather than facilitating.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#29

Post by lucumo »

grugagag wrote: post #6
GauntletWizard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's a neverending treadmill of naming if you do that. Every good idea will be taken over by fraudsters. A lot of good ideas are already tainted by this, and while you have to pick your battles, there's something to be said for standing your ground on naming.

Don’t name it, just do. As soon as you name it and becomes a bit known fraudsters come, take the name and begin the grift

This has been my favourite approach as well. Once you label something, you get discussions about what is and isn't the label. Once you label something, the debate on semantics starts and the discussion of the problem stops.

At the same time, unnamed things exist in a state where you can't even think about them without thinking about what it really is. You don't have a word for it, so you have to use the description.

And that makes it easier to change too, if it doesn't work or when circumstances change.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#30

Post by oneshtein »

midasz wrote: post #20
PradeetPatel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having clear requirements, good communications with key stakeholders and empower the enginees.

What if the requirements are super clear but they change? When do you find out and what happens then? I've personally never had a project where the requirements were 100% clear and stayed exactly the same. Even when writing a v2 of an existing project from the ground up things tended to be unclear and subject to change.

> What if the requirements are super clear but they change?

You need to communicate with stakeholders then, to change requirements, explain mistakes, set new goals, and reprioritize tasks. Agile (SCRUM/Kanban/etc.) are designed with frequently changing requirements in mind. In SCRUM, this is done at sprint review/sprint planning stage. In Kanban, it's continuous process.

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