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Agile Is a Tainted Term

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Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#51

Post by pydry »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #23
pydry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that made agile ripe for fraudsters/cargo cultists was how vaguely it was defined. That can be fixed by defining something new, more precisely.

> That can be fixed by defining something new, more precisely. I do not think that we're going to find a single precisely-defined process that will work well for everyone. The strength of the OG Agile thinking was the iterative, "inspect and adapt", "shorten the feedback cycle" thinking. Which is somewhat in opposition to your desire for a precisely defined process. The Agile manifesto specifically stated that "proce…

I absolutely don't think we need a single precisely defined process that will work for everyone. That's scrum and it's shit.

I think we just need some criteria which can provide clear answers to whether you're doing agile or bullshitting around or doing cargo cult agile. The manifesto/principles aren't that but they should have been. Instead they were some sort of vague inspiring motivational bullshit. "Build projects around motivated individuals!". Yeah, ok whatever. No mention of the word iterate though.

My proposal isn't a different mindset. I actually think I have the same one as you because when I think "agile" my interpretation centers more around short feedback cycles and iterative development. I use those words. People who have done it use those words. The manifesto doesn't. The CEOs who want to bring in "agile consultants" while still keeping quarterly milestone planning sure don't. They think it's a kind of software they install in their devs are are generally oblivious to the idea that it means they have to change too. The fact that they do needs to be brought into sharp focus. The fact that the consultants who promise them waterfall in agile clothing are bullshitting needs to be brought into sharp focus.

My proposal is to codify more precisely the things which make "agile" "agile" so that it becomes at the very least harder if not impossible to bullshit about it. I'm not suggesting making it less flexible. I'm suggesting we describe what it is in a way that we can categorically rule out what it isn't.

And then give it a different name, to avoid all the baggage from the old one. Some name I can point to and say "we need to be doing that" which rules out at least 95% of the bullshit artists.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#52

Post by codex_beta »

The agile approach is generally academic mumbo jumbo that is rarely effective/efficient in large-scale industrial practice. Coming from an industry where functional safety is paramount, I think the agile approach is rarely appropriate unless you want to effectively waste everyone's valuable time with unnecessary overheads. If the product has already been launched or is at a pre-launch stage AND the team is small and professional enough, it might even work, but then why bother with such processes and roles overheads in the first place!

Irrespective of the chosen approach, it’s crucial to systematically elicit requirements, document specifications, and rigorously verify and validate everything. Implementation should ideally be supported by thorough unit tests, and, most importantly, all artifacts must be traceable across different abstraction layers and to the required level of detail.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#53

Post by sime2009 »

pitched wrote: post #49
sime2009 wrote: post #46

The rarely discussed cornerstone of Agile is trusting the team and letting them organise themselves. For most organisation this represents a huge internal change in power structure. The Agile industrial complex can't really sell a message to their customers (i.e. managers) that the development teams should have the power and run themselves how they feel fit. This message amounts to "if this works, we can fire the man…

I’ll take this a step further too and say that if Agile is being introduced by management, it means they don’t trust their teams to organize themselves. Agile, as sold, can’t actually work in that environment. The battle is already lost.

That's right. It can't be pushed down from above. The team has to want to do this and take the power.

A manager can start work on this kind of culture shift without even saying the word "agile". They need to give their teams more trust and room to govern themselves. i.e. managers need to get out of the way. When a team is open to the idea of Agile or scrum, then the manager could ask the team if they would like training or coaching. But the ground has to be made fertile first.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#54

Post by bazil376 »

chris_nielsen wrote: post #4

Page wont load for me. BUT, this title is the first sensible thing I’ve heard someone say about Agile in 10 years. I just don’t use the word Agile. Too many people like it for the wrong reasons, or hate it for the wrong reasons. Everyone has a different understanding of it. It’s just not useful. If I say “let’s use Agile” it’s just going to lead to arguments and misunderstandings. Id always rather be more specific ab…

Your last paragraph is basically the conclusion of the article. “Agile” is so loaded it’s not worth using

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#55

Post by pydry »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #43
oneshtein wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A customer of the software product need to know that after spending of $X dollars for Y days he will receive Z. In a working Agile project, PM must calculate team velocity and then use it to predict arrival time and expenses, then add/remove developers or features to meet budget and/or dead line. Agile manifesto says nothing about that.

Well, they think they need that. What they really need is accomplish some business goal. The Agile manifesto doesn't say anything about the former because it would defeat its own purpose.

The customer can demand that, but they need to understand that that also demands waterfall. It's unrealistic to have that kind of expectation and get anything other than cargo cult agile.

There are lots of consequences of doing "agile" properly that go way above the programmers' heads. That includes clients being able to specify requirements and price but not both at the same time.

I've worked on tons of teams where it was dictated from up on high that we should do agile and also do waterfall planning (always called something else). Agile consultants often have a tendency to accommodate this contradiction because up on high controls the purse strings and they need to eat.

The danger is that over time the things they do to eat become their identity and the genuine people get washed out of the industry.

We do need a sensemaking framework and a term which can be used to rule this type of thing out.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#56

Post by hu3 »

viraptor wrote: post #45
PradeetPatel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having clear requirements, good communications with key stakeholders and empower the enginees.

That sounds familiar... Oh ! That's where agile ideas come from! http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

That existed before agile.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#57

Post by photonerd »

pydry wrote: post #18
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

"Agile" was defined so vaguely in the beginning that it became a kind of template for everyone to project their (often contradictory) ideas and dreams on to. Scrum fixed that by being as bad as it was precisely defined. I can get what the originators of agile were getting at but they explained themselves super badly.

Scrum is supposed to be training wheels for agile, not the end point.

I think a lot of ppl forget that.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#58

Post by JackSlateur »

midasz wrote: post #17
slivanes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By focusing on the product rather than the process.

How does that work? So you've already went through the steps of figuring out a process, or do you just pick one and stick with it - accepting shitty parts? What's the process?

You failed as soon as you think "process"

A process is a hardcoded way of do thing, which is deficient because it cannot react to an ever-changing world

A better way to handle things is by defining "what" should be done, not "how" it should be done

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#59

Post by DrNosferatu »

thimp wrote: post #12
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

I’ve seen agile done well once. Yes it does happen. The process was not described, spoken of or even considered. It just existed between a few like minded decent engineers. Their manager got an “agile PM” forced on them and it broke. The problem is charlatans, dictators and career ticket shufflers that deliver little to no ROI and generally abject chaos.

Quality engineering has to be *repeatable*.

If it’s not described, and only works via the “minds of a few engineers”, you get amateur treehouse-quality engineering like the 737 MAX.

I guess chance can make it work well like that “once” sporadically, but when you need to touch that code again to maintain it, we go back to the amateur treehouse.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#60

Post by whstl »

thimp wrote: post #12
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

I’ve seen agile done well once. Yes it does happen. The process was not described, spoken of or even considered. It just existed between a few like minded decent engineers. Their manager got an “agile PM” forced on them and it broke. The problem is charlatans, dictators and career ticket shufflers that deliver little to no ROI and generally abject chaos.

I also had perfectly operating squads crumble to dust because of PMs, more than once.

I still don't understand the role of PMs when there are engineering managers, product owners and self-organizing teams involved.

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