Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#221

Post by ellius » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

jammygit wrote: post #205

ellius wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably know this, but a lot of studies back you up. Being smarter doesn't necessarily make you more likely to be right, but it makes you a hell of a lot better at rationalizing your position and persuading others. Also, that comment about the "old guy with an inferiority complex who sneaks one really profound comment in every meeting" really hit home. We have that guy on my team too. You have to wonder what's g…

> Being smarter doesn't necessarily make you more likely to be right (...) > (...), but it makes you a hell of a lot better at rationalizing your position and persuading others. My reading has said the opposite: smart people are far more likely to be right, but it does no good because the important thing is to be able to communicate

So I included that "necessarily" on purpose. In general smarter people will solve problems more correctly. But there is also a whole class of problems where being smart is actually a detriment. Here is a good read on this topic: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/frontal-cortex/why-smart-peop...

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#222

Post by Nomentatus » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

streetcat1 wrote: post #107

hinkley wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without mature technology, you want to shake down the new tech early to find out if it’s going to crumble around your shoulders at the worst possible moment. While Agile is not perfect for this kind of work, it does have a lot of facility in this area. Now if you could just get any two people to agree on what constitutes the last responsible moment... And with new tech you often have to do it first or do it bett…

So, just from observation, when developing new tech, there is always LAST to market advantage. MS was LAST to market. Google was LAST to market. Kubernetes was LAST to market. Apple was LAST to market (After MS and Palm). I think that Agile is good after the market is captured. But when developing the core tech (usually with no customers beside product managers and based on research), it might be too constraining.

Gates made this argument strongly, in public, before getting nailed a couple of times - the latest big smackdown being Android, as he's confessed recently. "Last to market" is often "first to market with the truly appropriate technology."

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#223

Post by Nomentatus » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

insertnickname wrote: post #126

theworld572 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the point of SCRUM then? If all it does is to tell you "do what makes sense" why do we even need it? Thats a rhetorical question, I already know the answer is that we need it in order to keep SCRUM consultants, certifications, training etc. a profitable business. Whether or not you think SCRUM is good or bad, you can't argue that a sizeable (if not the majority) amount of companies are "not doing it right" and…

Scrum , not SCRUM . It's not an acronym.

Unless you work for Scottish Club Rugby Union Magazine. https://scrummagazine.com/

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#224

Post by technofiend » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #29

> This type of innovation takes significant up-front design time, and working on components over longer than one week iterations. Because the projects have such simple external interfaces, and so much internal complexity, much of the work is not even visible to “customers”, so there is no way to write customer visible stories about it. This type of software takes 8–20 months to deliver the first working version to th…

My project just delivered MVP 1 which automated a certain infrastructure build process that was previously a mix of manual, semi-manual (people running scripts by hand) and automated. In parallel to that green field development I also fixed the issues with the previous solution. Happy path for the old tool is down from 20+ days to 4 and dropping, happy path for the new tool is hours.

Now that I've delivered those improvements my boss added reworking the software stack that feeds my current system. He also said to me "Oh, BTW RIFs are coming, take that how you will."

So I'm not certain if at this point I'll be RIFd right after delivery of a complete retooling of our infrastructure build process.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#225

Post by grok2 » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

InvOfSmallC wrote: post #173

grok2 wrote: post #75

Anybody doing Agile/Scrum know how it deals with people issues? It seems like with these practices everyone is on a tight leash -- how does it deal with the fact that real people have a natural ebb and flow in their concentration levels at work or interest in work. If your are scrumming all the time, how do you get slow periods in your work cycle so you can recharge (aka slack-off :-))?

I work with agile and have 20% of time for personal stuff I want to try/study. Every week.

Integrated in your work-load officially? That still doesn't explain stuff. Scrum-masters, please weigh in...thanks!

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#226

Post by mav3rick » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #192

mav3rick wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Everyone is using duck duck go , Proton mail and vimeo outside of HN.

Allo me on Google Messenger. Or was it Android Messenger? Anyway, my Duo handle is xxHangoutsDudexx. We start a Google Talk session later.

Have fun using signal with your two friends.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#227

Post by zamadatix » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:14 PM UTC

mmcnl wrote: post #168

zamadatix wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I've seen with agile is it's too easy to turn into "as long as we complete something that was defined as value this sprint the problem isn't what this team is doing" that many places end up having teams avoiding any large or external issues completely while reporting everything is going great. You may say it's not a methodologies fault when it's misused but I'd say it IS a methodologies fault if the feedb…

> teams avoiding any large or external issues completely while reporting everything is going great This is what happens all the time in big companies, agile or not.

Avoiding sure reporting not really. I mean sure anyone can purposefully not follow a methodology but that's not what I'm talking about here.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#228

Post by goatinaboat » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #224

js2 wrote: post #29

> This type of innovation takes significant up-front design time, and working on components over longer than one week iterations. Because the projects have such simple external interfaces, and so much internal complexity, much of the work is not even visible to “customers”, so there is no way to write customer visible stories about it. This type of software takes 8–20 months to deliver the first working version to th…

My project just delivered MVP 1 which automated a certain infrastructure build process that was previously a mix of manual, semi-manual (people running scripts by hand) and automated. In parallel to that green field development I also fixed the issues with the previous solution. Happy path for the old tool is down from 20+ days to 4 and dropping, happy path for the new tool is hours. Now that I've delivered those imp…

So I'm not certain if at this point I'll be RIFd right after delivery of a complete retooling of our infrastructure build process.

Did you write the documentation yet? I think you know what I mean.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#229

Post by utopian3 » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

mav3rick wrote: post #226

ilikehurdles wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allo me on Google Messenger. Or was it Android Messenger? Anyway, my Duo handle is xxHangoutsDudexx. We start a Google Talk session later.

Have fun using signal with your two friends.

You missed the point by two miles. I still use Hangouts, but they’ve introduced 12 other apps in the last 10 years that do the exact same thing. All while making Hangouts / google chat / gTalk (whatever it was originally called in Labs) worse.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#230

Post by mav3rick » Sun, Aug 04, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

utopian3 wrote: post #229

mav3rick wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have fun using signal with your two friends.

You missed the point by two miles. I still use Hangouts, but they’ve introduced 12 other apps in the last 10 years that do the exact same thing. All while making Hangouts / google chat / gTalk (whatever it was originally called in Labs) worse.

Google is good at a lot of things. Messaging strategy is not one of them. HN just hates Google doing well in anything so the expected harping on messaging.