Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#41

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

> I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well,

What made them stand out? What did the do to make it run well?

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#42

Post by awinder » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

  I'm ready for what comes next after Agile.
  I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say 
  one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that
  just makes it frustrating for everyone.

I can't tell you what will come after agile, but I can tell you that it'll probably have around a 20% effective rate all the same.

Also there's nothing in agile that would prevent you from designing things upfront, I believe the exact phrasing is "Responding to Change Over Following a Plan". I.e., build extendable / adaptable designs (that can change), do the amount of specification upfront that provides value, but don't ticket-plan 2 years of development upfront.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#43

Post by bartimus » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

The outcome can only be as good as the sum of its part. The best methodology with the worst people will still result in a poor outcome. The best people with the worst methodology might still manage do deliver something useful. The best outcomes come from trusting good people do what they're good at. Why trust a manager over an engineer?

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#44

Post by loriverkutya » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

snarf21 wrote: post #36

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

One thing I learned a long time was this: A "bad" process that has complete buy-in and everyone participates in will always outperform a "good" process that has lip service buy-in and disagreements about who does what.

It's hard to imagine, that a bad process has complete buy-in.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#45

Post by lbatx » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #15

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of agile. Agile isn't Scrum, agile isn't Kanban, Agile isn't even really the manifesto. Agile is, like lean manufacturing (one of its inspirations), based around one really simple concept: the workers know the most about what they are doing and should be leading the charge on what they are doing. If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -…

> If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -- if your story points are used to tell management how much work is getting done, if management is using the daily standup to make sure people are on-task instead of being about commitments.

Story points being used for the team and to tell management how much work is being done are not mutually exclusive. I'm also not sure of your distinction between "on-task" and "commitments". If I've made a commitment, there are some tasks that need to be performed to meet that commitment, no?

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#46

Post by loriverkutya » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

kleiba wrote: post #24

Does any one have good (as in: known to actually have had a positive effect in the past) insights on how to convince your manager(s) that (at least their version of) "agile" is not helping the company? My wife works in a company where the managements seems to be quite "proud" to apply "agile methods" but in my wife's opinion, it's more BS bingo than producing a measurable boost in productivity, quality, or any other…

I found myself in the same situation multiple times. There were times, when I was just trying to convince people we should do things differently and wasting less time. It was never working.

Nowadays, I just find a new company.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#47

Post by intelliderp » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

bartimus wrote: post #43

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

The outcome can only be as good as the sum of its part. The best methodology with the worst people will still result in a poor outcome. The best people with the worst methodology might still manage do deliver something useful. The best outcomes come from trusting good people do what they're good at. Why trust a manager over an engineer?

The uncomfortable truth that the consulting world profits off of people not knowing.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#48

Post by Jach » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

satyrnein wrote: post #18

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

>So the companies always had a successful exit even if the codebase passed onto the acquiring company or to the public investors had major issues.. so at least in my experience there's no feedback loop to correct the issues. In a sense, it sounds like there is nothing to correct! Would moving more slowly and deliberately have improved the exit, or worsened it? Perhaps code quality has only a tenuous link to business…

I periodically think about this line I found on the C2 wiki:

"I believe it is time to explicitly state the long held secret of software, we do not need to do design; design is ineffective and costly." --Wayne Mack

It's really hard to argue with a money printing machine. That theoretically it might print faster or at least longer for a bigger integral, after doing things that seem to slow down printing now, is also hard to believe if the person you're arguing with has never experienced such a non-linear outcome.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#49

Post by cwyers » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

lbatx wrote: post #45

cwyers wrote: post #15

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of agile. Agile isn't Scrum, agile isn't Kanban, Agile isn't even really the manifesto. Agile is, like lean manufacturing (one of its inspirations), based around one really simple concept: the workers know the most about what they are doing and should be leading the charge on what they are doing. If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -…

> If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -- if your story points are used to tell management how much work is getting done, if management is using the daily standup to make sure people are on-task instead of being about commitments. Story points being used for the team and to tell management how much work is being done are not mutually exclusive. I'm also not sure of your distinctio…

In a daily standup, it should be about commitments _to your teammates_, not to management. In other words, Bob needs to do X before Alice can do Y, so Bob commits to Alice about his work on X. If there's problems, they can talk about it. That's not the same as some middle manager coming in and going, you need to do X to hit some KPI.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#50

Post by opportune » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

I cannot agree more with the assessment that agile works well with front end and poorly with backend.

Agile with the backend/infrastructure actively encourages taking on technical debt just to get something, anything up and running as quickly as possible. Which is great for PMs' careers but terrible for the developers who have to maintain those systems, and ultimately the organization as a whole. Maybe it's even great for job security or to get an IPO/acquisition as quickly as possible, but it really does result in much more work in the long term.

The issue is that the people who push for these terribly designed backends that suck up unnecessary human-years worth of work to maintain, patch, and fix are never held accountable. And if you're stucking as a developer working on these systems, you're screwed (and it can even be bad for your career since you're not shipping anything new). I can't tell you how much of a relief it is to just walk away from that kind of mess... which really, makes the situation even worse, since everytime that happens organizational knowledge gets lost and some poor soul gets to start working on something terrible with much less context