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Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

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Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#281

Post by ellen364 »

greatgib wrote: post #221
ellen364 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely. The tough part for me has been experiencing a team like that, then moving and having no idea how to help create a similar environment with my new team. Any tips?

In my opinion, to start with, you need to have "senior"/experienced members. Most junior still need to be taken care of before they could be blindly trusted on some topics. Also, in my experience, most of cases like this happened in places were the management was kind of "absent" or "defective" in some way. For example when you have the next level of management hierarchy in another place/country. In such a case, ofte…

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Not sure what I’m going to try, but you’ve given me some ideas to think about.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#282

Post by andrei_says_ »

dirkt wrote: post #57
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #41

The fundamental problem with Agile is the fundamental problem with all product development: The customer doesn't know what they want Agile assumes as a first principal that including the customer throughout the development process will align the building team and the customer to come to the same conclusion. This is almost never actually true. Having built and managed a lot of products I can state fairly confidently t…

> The fundamental problem with Agile This is not what the article is about. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, it says e.g. - Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - Responding to change over following a plan What you get in quite a few big companies following "Agile" with the air quotes is the opposite: - Processes and tools over individuals and interactions - Following (and making) a plan over resp…

There’s a fascinating talk by Dave Thomas, one of the authors of the agile manifesto, speaking of the simple meaning of the manifesto and the insanity of the Agile Industrial Complex bureaucratic cult created around it.

Agile is Dead - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

Here’s a blog post by him: https://pragdave.me/blog/2014/03/04/time-to-kill-agile.html

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#283

Post by walshemj »

detaro wrote: post #259
walshemj wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co located teams is what you really need (sorry WFH fans)

The best "agile" experience I've had was with a team spread across the continent. Good communication & process != co-located. (And if your customer is external, it even puts them on a more equal footing)

Ok it might be "good" but its not the best "communication & process " you get with collocated teams.

The skunkworks teams the developed the Apple MAC is one very good example.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#284

Post by walshemj »

pjmlp wrote: post #258
walshemj wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co located teams is what you really need (sorry WFH fans)

Try to sell that to corporations with distributed teams, on the RFP answer. The majority will rather pick other vendor that doesn't propose such change into their internal processes. Unless they are asking for consultation on how to change work processes, that is.

That would not be Agile then - Agile trades off almost every thing for speed.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#285

Post by ipnon »

FredPret wrote: post #227
ipnon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how revolutionary Marxism functions. Nobody knows what the hell Marx wrote in those books, or what any of it means, but it cannot be argued in communist regimes that there is a system in place, and that the vanguard knows whats best. Replace Marxism with Agile, communist regimes with corporation, and vanguard with management, and you have the recipe for soulless employment.

Imagine a revolution with a retrospective

We could call it an election!

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#286

Post by g051051 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #279
g051051 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not about deliberateness, it's about mindless ritual for rituals' sake. Only idiots would perform cargo-cult practices over a set time regardless of need or utility. By using your brain to take time only when necessary you help to ensure the absence of that kind of moronic behavior. Force time wasting meetings and burn out your team with a lack of respect. No one is forcing you to be intelligent.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#287

Post by mytailorisrich »

eesmith wrote: post #278
mytailorisrich wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 evi…

I put 'standard' in quotes and meant that it (and its derivatives) was widespread. I'm sure not all companies used it, perhaps it also varied by domain. My experience is that it was indeed common, and still somewhat is. I read at my first job 20 years ago we had to take a training on the V model, which is derived from the waterfall model. It has also always been common in my experience to write plenty of detailed specs before writing any code, for instance.

I don't see much value in debating this. It seems clear to me that the people who wrote the Agile manifesto have experience in working in such, or similar environment and reacted to change it. And clearly that way of working was widespread enough and enough of a pain point to strike a cord. Certainly, when I first read the manifesto it struck a cord and I understood exactly where they were coming from. I think it is spot on.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#288

Post by commandlinefan »

dirkt wrote: post #57
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #41

The fundamental problem with Agile is the fundamental problem with all product development: The customer doesn't know what they want Agile assumes as a first principal that including the customer throughout the development process will align the building team and the customer to come to the same conclusion. This is almost never actually true. Having built and managed a lot of products I can state fairly confidently t…

> The fundamental problem with Agile This is not what the article is about. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, it says e.g. - Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - Responding to change over following a plan What you get in quite a few big companies following "Agile" with the air quotes is the opposite: - Processes and tools over individuals and interactions - Following (and making) a plan over resp…

The Agile Manifesto never came out and said so, but it only ever made any sense if you give up the idea of a fixed delivery date. Of course, the idea of a fixed delivery date for a software project never made sense in the first place, but you’ll have to pry that nonsense from their cold dead hands. Big-A “Agile” is an attempt to keep what they (think they) want… so it ends up being useless.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#289

Post by pjmlp »

walshemj wrote: post #284
pjmlp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to sell that to corporations with distributed teams, on the RFP answer. The majority will rather pick other vendor that doesn't propose such change into their internal processes. Unless they are asking for consultation on how to change work processes, that is.

That would not be Agile then - Agile trades off almost every thing for speed.

Hence why it is in its current adoption state.

Re: Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

#290

Post by TameAntelope »

axegon_ wrote: post #191
TameAntelope wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, average Joe in your examples here isn’t being given the whole picture. I’m not sure what your point actually is; are you saying that since Story Points don’t help you specifically, they’re a waste? Don’t you get how myopic that is?

My point is that they are often as relevant to reality as the flying spaghetti monster to spaghetti. Read my previous comments dump whatever you have in memory in an s3 bucket? Story point 0-give me 10 minutes. Then why did it take a week and a half? Cause someone from another team across the world has to grant permissions which was 3 days of discussions, then the VPN was messed up, which took another 2 teams on the…

Well yeah, agile works best when everyone involved is in the room.
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