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Agile Is a Glass Cannon

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Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#41

Post by agumonkey »

jen729w wrote: post #4

Anyone else notice Agile creeping in where it has no place being? I’m suffering on an infrastructure transformation project — migrating complex apps to Azure — which insists on being Agile. It’s preposterous. I just started and already I’ve counted up 40 person-hours of time in ‘planning’ sessions. I spent two hours in a room with an architect and a whiteboard and then one single day myself on Thursday building a sch…

I'm not sure we feel the same but I kinda experienced high anger after seeing my team babble for hours on epics while no information of value was put out clearly and no actual design/planning was produced.

Just a bunch of paragraphs in jira. Smells like rot already.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#42

Post by eesmith »

keyraycheck wrote: post #38
onethought wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by the question? Non-agile people? You mean people that don’t do scrum? Or do you want someone to step forward and say: “I’m really rigid and refuse to change direction once I start, this is how I get things done…” If you mean no scrum, simple, no card wall, tasks are epics, trust people to know what to do and let them do it. Help people when needed.

I would love to know how people work. I wonder what is the alternative. The board is far from only agile practice and nit obligatory either. Even Epic sounds like an agile term.

The problem I have with your question is "agile" seems to mean anything except a pure waterfall development model.

Even modified waterfall seems to be described as agile.

As a sole developer of a software product, I haven't figured out how the agile principles even apply to me.

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" doesn't work when there's only one person.

"Working software over comprehensive documentation" Does that mean ship code but don't provide comprehensive documentation to my users? No, it means internal process documentation. Which isn't applicable since it's just me.

"Customer collaboration over contract negotiation". That only applies for contract software development. I sell a software product.

"Responding to change over following a plan". I don't have much of a plan, so I guess I do this one. But I do have a long-term vision, since that's essential to figuring out what groundwork to have.

Personally, I learned RAD (rapid application development) when I was a young programmer back in the 1990s, and that's what I still use.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#43

Post by blowski »

dragonwriter wrote: post #26
jen729w wrote: post #4

Anyone else notice Agile creeping in where it has no place being? I’m suffering on an infrastructure transformation project — migrating complex apps to Azure — which insists on being Agile. It’s preposterous. I just started and already I’ve counted up 40 person-hours of time in ‘planning’ sessions. I spent two hours in a room with an architect and a whiteboard and then one single day myself on Thursday building a sch…

> Anyone else notice Agile creeping in where it has no place being? I rarely even see Agile creeping in where it does belong and is being advertised as being practiced. > I’m suffering on an infrastructure transformation project — migrating complex apps to Azure — which insists on being Agile. It’s preposterous. I just started and already I’ve counted up 40 person-hours of time in ‘planning’ sessions. If you’ve just…

There are 2 methodologies with very similar names.

“Agile” is recommended by big consultancies. It aims to improve managers’ control of processes and costs by removing autonomy from those doing the implementation. It does this using templates, hierarchies and policies.

“agile” (small a) as practised by Kent Beck. It aims to improve outcomes by handing more control to the implementers through collaboration. It does this through good communication and focus.

The insight of this submission is that when those implementers are capable and motivated to deliver a good outcome, this will deliver the best possible outcome. But if they’re not, then nobody is in control, and you just have chaos.

Big A Agile still has crappy outcomes but the lines of accountability are at least clearer.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#44

Post by saiya-jin »

mongol wrote: post #20

I think it is crazy we are debating Agile more than 20 years after it was coined. After such long time, a successful idea should not need constant debate about its advantages and disadvantages. We should be on the next thing now, post-Agile, whatever that would be.

Because its not very intuitive until you start doing it (at least some parts). I mean having meeting for 10 mins every day vs 1x weekly hourly one works for every project I've ever seen. Shorter sprints work generally better too, tighter interaction with stakeholders is simply reasonable.

That's mostly what I've seen adopted, not much more. Its a bit painful if you ever need to go back, but entirely possible. Some people actually perform quite well with old ways.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#45

Post by eurasiantiger »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #21
pflenker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison to home building is not a good one - houses are things which are repeated, with customizations and slight modifications, and people are deeply familiar with houses. The closest analogy in the software world would be simple websites such as blog or easy shops, where e.g. a WordPress plus some customizations would be enough. Software is completely different though. Building chatgpt is vastly different fr…

I hear this a lot. The counter argument is virtually no one is going from implementing chat gpt as project 1 to implementing google maps as project 2. In fact they are going from implementing v1 of google Maps to v1.1. When I worked as a kitchen fitter there was a much greater difference between projects that anything I've experienced with a single employer as a dev. Fitting a top end kitchen in a listed 500 year old…

That completely depends on the size of the employer. Small shops give devs more variety, as they simply have less resources to go around.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#46

Post by eurasiantiger »

eesmith wrote: post #42
keyraycheck wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know how people work. I wonder what is the alternative. The board is far from only agile practice and nit obligatory either. Even Epic sounds like an agile term.

The problem I have with your question is "agile" seems to mean anything except a pure waterfall development model. Even modified waterfall seems to be described as agile. As a sole developer of a software product, I haven't figured out how the agile principles even apply to me. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" doesn't work when there's only one person. "Working software over comprehensive docum…

You, the developer, have one customer: you, the software vendor.

The software vendor sells a software product, not the developer.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#47

Post by tempodox »

mongol wrote: post #20

I think it is crazy we are debating Agile more than 20 years after it was coined. After such long time, a successful idea should not need constant debate about its advantages and disadvantages. We should be on the next thing now, post-Agile, whatever that would be.

IMO one thing that makes it still interesting to discuss is that it has become something of a poster child of cargo cult. That phenomenon persists, whether it's Agile or something else.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#48

Post by tempodox »

S4mb wrote: post #32

I just wanna toot a horn for good old prince2 here. I know it's not the cool new thing on the bloc but I would prefer it for stuff like infrastructure or organizational change projects any day. If you want to get an impression check out this doc about a prince2 project initiation document: https://prince2.wiki/management-products/project-initiation-... In case it comes accross a little bit to advertisy: I am not affi…

That looks very process-heavy with a lot of specialized vocabulary.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#49

Post by choeger »

jen729w wrote: post #4

Anyone else notice Agile creeping in where it has no place being? I’m suffering on an infrastructure transformation project — migrating complex apps to Azure — which insists on being Agile. It’s preposterous. I just started and already I’ve counted up 40 person-hours of time in ‘planning’ sessions. I spent two hours in a room with an architect and a whiteboard and then one single day myself on Thursday building a sch…

Agile as you observe it ist just double speak for micromanagement in my experience.

What we experience is a caste of highly paid managers that a) don't understand the work their subordinates are doing, b) don't trust them and thus c) cannot understand the risks of a project for their personal careers.

Their, quite ingenious, response is "agile": Micromanage everything to mitigate b), but wrap that micromanagement in a "industry standard" process that hides everything behind double speak (scrum). In particular put an emphasis on the point that "the team decides" and "there are no deadlines in agile", while essentially driving all decisions informally (e.g., by prioritizing the backlog) and enforcing deadlines whenever you see fit. Thus, there's no overt responsibility left for a manager, effectively eliminating c).

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#50

Post by jen729w »

agumonkey wrote: post #41
jen729w wrote: post #4

Anyone else notice Agile creeping in where it has no place being? I’m suffering on an infrastructure transformation project — migrating complex apps to Azure — which insists on being Agile. It’s preposterous. I just started and already I’ve counted up 40 person-hours of time in ‘planning’ sessions. I spent two hours in a room with an architect and a whiteboard and then one single day myself on Thursday building a sch…

I'm not sure we feel the same but I kinda experienced high anger after seeing my team babble for hours on epics while no information of value was put out clearly and no actual design/planning was produced. Just a bunch of paragraphs in jira. Smells like rot already.

We feel the same. I’m ready to lose my mind.
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