Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion • Hacker News Board

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#271

Post by pydry » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

lrdswrk00 wrote: post #265

pydry wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They’re purposely ill defined. Yes they were. The cynical side of me says that this was because they were purposefully trying to create a rallying cry or something akin to a religion to better sell their wares and were unconcerned about the fallout that would ensue. The less cynical side of me says they did it because they came up with "extreme programming" and knew that a lot of it was kind of bullshit, disagreed w…

Who is they? The original authors have little to do with the administrative state that’s been wrapped around our agency. Anarchy is no good. Haha. Your efforts are constrained by physical science, social objectives. There’s plenty of structure to prevent anarchy. But you would further impose problem solving constraints on others thought work. Shit n hellfire; what a dumpster fire of a culture. Would you say something…

>Who is they?

The 17 authors of the manifesto.

>But you would further impose problem solving constraints on others thought work.

I would, yes. I've worked with a diversity of methodologies and several times with no explicit methodology all and in a team context we ended up a disorganized mess.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#272

Post by 3grdlurker » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #257

3grdlurker wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a vague as hell set of proscriptions that everybody could project their own ideas on to that got turned into a pseudo-religion. Then you're just complaining about the nature of language, because people do the same thing with religious text, literary text, the law, contracts, even daily conversations and flirtations. This is hardly a point that you can hold against the Agile manifesto. > I once had it used agai…

>Then you're just complaining about the nature of language, because people do the same thing with religious text, literary text, the law, contracts, even daily conversations and flirtations. This is hardly a point that you can hold against the Agile manifesto. Funnily enough the features of language which are ideally suited for flirtation and writing poetry and preaching religion or nationalism and other such "let yo…

> aren't as appropriate when you're doing engineering

Yeah but that's not the point that I'm making, is it? What I'm saying is that people project their own meanings into language all the time regardless of whether the language is being used in deeply personal interactions or in professional settings; therefore you can't just fault the Agile manifesto for its supposed "ambiguity".

On the point re: how laws and contracts are different -- sure, these things have gotten more precise over time, but if the language of law was inherently precise then we wouldn't have a need for judges and courts and congresses. Heck, even mathematics isn't safe from the problem of the imprecision of language. Wasn't there a time just in the last year or two when people were debating about the correctness of the statement, "one plus one always equals two"?

Which, really, brings us to the ultimate question, which also happens to be my response to your last sentence:

> The reason people say "people don't get Agile" is because they don't get that when the manifesto flirted with them it encouraged them to fill in the gaps with their own idealized version of software development that wasn't necessarily shared by everyone else.

So then is it a problem with the manifesto or with the people?

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#273

Post by lrdswrk00 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #271

lrdswrk00 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is they? The original authors have little to do with the administrative state that’s been wrapped around our agency. Anarchy is no good. Haha. Your efforts are constrained by physical science, social objectives. There’s plenty of structure to prevent anarchy. But you would further impose problem solving constraints on others thought work. Shit n hellfire; what a dumpster fire of a culture. Would you say something…

>Who is they? The 17 authors of the manifesto. >But you would further impose problem solving constraints on others thought work. I would, yes. I've worked with a diversity of methodologies and several times with no explicit methodology all and in a team context we ended up a disorganized mess.

You might try to accept the rest of us don’t jump through the hoops of having a financially thriving job for you.

It’s not to bring order to chaos. It’s to afford shelter, food, and healthcare.

Sorry, not sorry.

Perhaps you’d be happier living as a hermit, where you can organize as you wish; everything just so! without the rest of humanity, that does quite a bit of the heavy lifting for you, interfering.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#274

Post by jdlshore » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #247

koonsolo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you might have an inexperienced manager or moderator. All it takes is "Hey John, I didn't hear you in the discussion yet. What are your thoughts?". "If there was 1 thing we should improve, what do you think it should be?". Stuff like that. I know even then it's sometimes hard, but at least you should try pulling things out of them.

> Then you might have an inexperienced manager or moderator. More likely you have people who are paid to do some workload which they are generally happy with. They aren't going to be motivated into doing more by accident, especially through their own action. This is the vast majority of people in the world, so good luck countering that momentum over the long term. Effective software project management is an interesti…

Agile assumes people are intrinsically motivated to do good work. (This is called “theory Y” management.) It doesn’t work if people have to be extrinsically motivated (“theory X”).

If you have a bunch of people who are just doing the minimum they’re paid to do, with no passion and excitement for the work itself or their team, you either need a different method or different people.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#275

Post by pydry » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

3grdlurker wrote: post #272

pydry wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Then you're just complaining about the nature of language, because people do the same thing with religious text, literary text, the law, contracts, even daily conversations and flirtations. This is hardly a point that you can hold against the Agile manifesto. Funnily enough the features of language which are ideally suited for flirtation and writing poetry and preaching religion or nationalism and other such "let yo…

> aren't as appropriate when you're doing engineering Yeah but that's not the point that I'm making, is it? What I'm saying is that people project their own meanings into language all the time regardless of whether the language is being used in deeply personal interactions or in professional settings; therefore you can't just fault the Agile manifesto for its supposed "ambiguity". On the point re: how laws and contra…

>Yeah but that's not the point that I'm making, is it? What I'm saying is that people project their own meanings into language all the time

That was MY point.

>therefore you can't just fault the Agile manifesto for its supposed "ambiguity".

You absolutely can. They didn't have to write it in an obtuse, ambiguous and metaphorical way that practically required people to project their own meaning. They deliberately chose to.

Scrum is a clear example of a methodology that is relatively (not completely) unambiguous. It's describing (in theory) a much more concrete form of "aspirational agile" and as such is at a lower risk of becoming all religious.

>On the point re: how laws and contracts are different -- sure, these things have gotten more precise over time, but if the language of law was inherently precise then we wouldn't have a need for judges and courts and congresses. Heck, even mathematics isn't safe from the problem of the imprecision of language. Wasn't there a time just in the last year or two when people were debating about the correctness of the statement, "one plus one always equals two"?

It's a sliding scale. Flirting and poetry is way over on the far left with the agile manifesto. Scrum is further to the right. Legalese is further still to the right. Math further still. It's fairly self-evident that the level of specificity required in the language used varies depending on the task. Being too specific when you flirt is common sitcom grist and nobody's ever made poetry out of a shopping list.

>Which, really, brings us to the ultimate question, which also happens to be my response to your last sentence: So then is it a problem with the manifesto or with the people?

It's the manifesto.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#276

Post by Andy_G11 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:27 PM UTC

Could it be that firms are simply claiming to be "Agile" irrespective of how they actually work because "Agile" has good PR?

Customers may think that "Agile" teams are stacked with experts all working in a state of grace, effortlessly pulling off technological miracles.

Behind the scenes, however, most of the work may have to be delivered by junior devs under the supervision of stressed-out micromanagers who use top-down bureaucratic control to progress the work.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#277

Post by g051051 » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #270

g051051 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the sprint, we spent AN ENTIRE DAY on retro. Before the next sprint started, we spent AN ENTIRE DAY on planning. I'm getting ill just thinking about this. Two whole days wasted every sprint!

Two whole days! Oh the humanity! If those two days out of every two weeks are critical to a team hitting their deadlines, then the team is already fucked. If you can't stop, think, talk, and relax for a moment, then you're already behind or will be behind and you'll probably never catch up without risking burnout of the team and mass quitting.

If your team is so dysfunctional that you need two days to stop, think, talk, and relax, then no amount of meetings are ever going to get you on track.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#278

Post by eesmith » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #144

eesmith wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your characterization is not true. The reality was quite the opposite. Here's the introduction of Steve McConnell's "Rapid Development" from 1994 - well before the Agile Manifesto! - Chapter 1, page 1: > The product manager told me he wanted to build a product right for a change. He wanted to pay attention to quality, prevent feature creep, control the schedule, and have a predictable ship date. > When the time came…

The 'standard' method is the waterfall model, which proceeds like you would for a bridge (of course this is just an approximate analogy) from specs, to architecture, detailed specs, implementation, and tests. Of course the shortcomings of this model have been known for a long time to anyone building software and so a number of other models appeared.

What does "standard" mean to you?

From what I can tell, that assertion is common in Agile advocacy.

But from my experience as a professional software developer in the 1990s, and from reading stories about software development, waterfall was not used at Apple, Be, Commodore, Data General, Infocom, Microsoft, VisiCorp, and more.

That's not to say no one used a (modified) waterfall model. Simply that I haven't found evidence that it's meaningful to say it was the standard development model. [1]

[1] Technically, DOD-STD-2167A's apparent bias towards waterfall was a "standard", but I don't think that's what most people mean in this context, and in any case it was replaced by MIL-STD-498 in 1994, well before the Agile Manifesto.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#279

Post by Jtsummers » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

g051051 wrote: post #277

Jtsummers wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two whole days! Oh the humanity! If those two days out of every two weeks are critical to a team hitting their deadlines, then the team is already fucked. If you can't stop, think, talk, and relax for a moment, then you're already behind or will be behind and you'll probably never catch up without risking burnout of the team and mass quitting.

If your team is so dysfunctional that you need two days to stop, think, talk, and relax, then no amount of meetings are ever going to get you on track.

It’s not about dysfunction. It’s about deliberateness. Only idiots press forward without taking time to think and consider how everything is going. By making it part of the routine you help to ensure the absence of that kind of moronic behavior. Press forward and burn out your team with a lack of slack and forethought if you want. No one is forcing you to be intelligent.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#280

Post by 3grdlurker » Sun, Jul 25, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #275

3grdlurker wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aren't as appropriate when you're doing engineering Yeah but that's not the point that I'm making, is it? What I'm saying is that people project their own meanings into language all the time regardless of whether the language is being used in deeply personal interactions or in professional settings; therefore you can't just fault the Agile manifesto for its supposed "ambiguity". On the point re: how laws and contra…

>Yeah but that's not the point that I'm making, is it? What I'm saying is that people project their own meanings into language all the time That was MY point. >therefore you can't just fault the Agile manifesto for its supposed "ambiguity". You absolutely can. They didn't have to write it in an obtuse, ambiguous and metaphorical way that practically required people to project their own meaning. They deliberately chos…

I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of the Agile manifesto. It’s not meant to be an algorithm or a highly specific set of instructions—it’s really just a collection of values that are meant to be the foundations of specific Agile frameworks, like Scrum. If you have trouble understanding that, then you must have trouble understanding the difference between Mission-Vision statements and KPIs.