Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Agile Is Dead

agilepilled.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 99 posts

Re: Agile Is Dead

#21

Post by zelphirkalt »

graypegg wrote: post #10

> It's for those who believe that skilled engineers are the true drivers of innovation and creators of meaningful products. Maybe the only thing I feel iffy about here. Just feels a bit naïve, I've worked together with some really talented designers. Also worked with some really talented product owners. Can't say I've agreed with every marketer/PR person I've worked with but they've saved our ass a few times. While I…

I think we need to reverse the roles or how they play out in companies in day to day life. We need other people than engineers to _ask_ for certain changes or _make suggestions_. Not a product manager, who takes ideas from other departments as law and _makes demands_ out of that for the engineers, and then by the might of their management position push the changes through.

We could be better off with for example a designer talking directly to the engineers and asking them "Can you achieve XYZ?" then the engineers thinks for a bit and then reply "We can do XY, but Z would be way more effort and not worth it at this time.". Then they decide, whether to do XY even without Z. I don't see why designers or engineers should not be capable of sitting together to come to a decision, and I don't see, how there necessarily someone needs to be involved trying to force something down the throat of engineers.

Similar for sales or marketing. They can come to the engineers, asking them: "We would like to sell feature XYZ. Are we ready for that?" then the engineers might say: "Nope, ask again next year.", instead of sales and marketing running off selling things that don't even exist yet. Then there needs to be acceptance and trust in the engineering team's competence. If that trust does not exist, we need to ask ourselves what the company is doing with such a team.

How I have come to loath the view, that engineers are like a band of little children, who will run off and go all crazy, if there is no manager ordering them around.

Some kind of overarching goals will need to be known or thought of. Those we can extract from having contact with the actual users, and from having great ideas, that we test out and get user feedback for.

In reality most engineers never have contact with the actual user in their daily job and as such, it is of course very far removed from being agile.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#22

Post by graypegg »

alganet wrote: post #13

The old manifesto is fine, isn't it? --- Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools Working software -- over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration -- over contract negotiation Responding to change -- over following a plan --- I still like it. The problem is not the lack of a good manifesto, is that people don't get it. Anyway, I like that someone else apart from me is thinking about these t…

> The problem is not the lack of a good manifesto, is that people don't get it.

I think that is the problem though. It's still a system for human beings, if the majority of human beings aren't getting it, not sure it works.

I can etch my commandments on stone tablets and show some people, but unless they both understand what I'm trying to say AND actually believe it, I don't think my stone tablets are really doing anything.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#23

Post by lincolnq »

Poe's Law is hitting me in the face right now. This is satire, right? I can't quite tell (seriously! please tell me)

If it is satire, it's quite subtle and well done. It references the old reasons why "Agile" was invented (current software development processes being bureaucratic and meeting-intensive, the new one will be lightweight and engineer-led).

If it is not satire, the juxtaposition is striking.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#24

Post by ryandvm »

alganet wrote: post #13

The old manifesto is fine, isn't it? --- Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools Working software -- over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration -- over contract negotiation Responding to change -- over following a plan --- I still like it. The problem is not the lack of a good manifesto, is that people don't get it. Anyway, I like that someone else apart from me is thinking about these t…

Agile is like communism - it sounds like a great idea. Except it never seems to work anywhere, and everywhere that it turns into a train wreck consisting of 45 minute daily stand-ups and 3 hour meetings arguing about T-shirt sizes or whether points are equivalent to time or not, the only explanation anyone ever proffers is, "well, you weren't doing Agile right".

No fucking shit. Nobody can do Agile right. I would argue that if something is so hard to get right, then it is effectively worthless.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#25

Post by dllthomas »

alganet wrote: post #13

The old manifesto is fine, isn't it? --- Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools Working software -- over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration -- over contract negotiation Responding to change -- over following a plan --- I still like it. The problem is not the lack of a good manifesto, is that people don't get it. Anyway, I like that someone else apart from me is thinking about these t…

> Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools

That's why I proposed having a "build team" where you ask an individual to run your compiles for you, rather than dealing with an impersonal CI system. More Agile.

The old Manifesto sounds nice, but it's more a reaction (overreaction?) to some pathologies of the time than something that will get you very far without otherwise knowing what you should be doing.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#26

Post by psunavy03 »

ryandvm wrote: post #24
alganet wrote: post #13

The old manifesto is fine, isn't it? --- Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools Working software -- over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration -- over contract negotiation Responding to change -- over following a plan --- I still like it. The problem is not the lack of a good manifesto, is that people don't get it. Anyway, I like that someone else apart from me is thinking about these t…

Agile is like communism - it sounds like a great idea. Except it never seems to work anywhere, and everywhere that it turns into a train wreck consisting of 45 minute daily stand-ups and 3 hour meetings arguing about T-shirt sizes or whether points are equivalent to time or not, the only explanation anyone ever proffers is, "well, you weren't doing Agile right". No fucking shit. Nobody can do Agile right. I would arg…

Bullshit. That's like claiming no one can play good football because the Cleveland Browns suck.

https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/

Re: Agile Is Dead

#27

Post by dogleash »

I wish you the best of luck in fighting one buzzword with your new one. If it gains traction I'm sure it won't be used by the champions of your buzzword to sneak in their own desires instead of rigid adhereance to your definition.

I recently stumbled across a blog post from 2006 explaining all the problems commonly heard today about capital-A agile. That means we've spent at least 18 years faffing about letting conmen steamroll us that it can't be a con because there's a nugget of a good idea burred somewhere in there. Good ideas don't need branding. Branding is never a good idea.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#28

Post by tomxor »

psunavy03 wrote: post #26
ryandvm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agile is like communism - it sounds like a great idea. Except it never seems to work anywhere, and everywhere that it turns into a train wreck consisting of 45 minute daily stand-ups and 3 hour meetings arguing about T-shirt sizes or whether points are equivalent to time or not, the only explanation anyone ever proffers is, "well, you weren't doing Agile right". No fucking shit. Nobody can do Agile right. I would arg…

Bullshit. That's like claiming no one can play good football because the Cleveland Browns suck. https://ronjeffries.com/xprog/articles/jatbaseball/

You are likening American football to communism? So which regime is Cleveland Browns, and which are the functional ones?

Re: Agile Is Dead

#29

Post by myhf »

psunavy03 wrote: post #20

Dumb shits misapplying Agile because "we do standups" are dead. The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff in such a way that they can validate their assumptions and get customer feedback as soon as possible. Not how well you "do Scrum," "increase your velocity," or any of that trash. But actually applying these concepts breaks some managers' brains, and then we get the…

So true. 90% of Agile practitioners give the rest a bad reputation.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#30

Post by alganet »

ryandvm wrote: post #24
alganet wrote: post #13

The old manifesto is fine, isn't it? --- Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools Working software -- over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration -- over contract negotiation Responding to change -- over following a plan --- I still like it. The problem is not the lack of a good manifesto, is that people don't get it. Anyway, I like that someone else apart from me is thinking about these t…

Agile is like communism - it sounds like a great idea. Except it never seems to work anywhere, and everywhere that it turns into a train wreck consisting of 45 minute daily stand-ups and 3 hour meetings arguing about T-shirt sizes or whether points are equivalent to time or not, the only explanation anyone ever proffers is, "well, you weren't doing Agile right". No fucking shit. Nobody can do Agile right. I would arg…

Agile is like communism. Lots of people like to hang external ideas to it. Some valid, some not.

Points, t-shirt sizes, figmas, etc... these are _tools_ and _processes_. Why the hell are you complaining about it when it says very clearly that you should focus on people and interactions?

Post reply on HN