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Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

tim.mcnamara.nz

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Re: Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

#61

Post by cassianoleal »

simplotek wrote: post #39
cassianoleal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that organisations want a magic formula that will solve all their problems. So they buy an off-the-shelf process with no regards to how it even came to be. Every time I see something not quite working the way it should in an agile environment, I refer back to the manifesto. Anything that feels like it's going more towards "the things on the right", I point it out. Good managers are willing to listen. M…

> The problem is that organisations want a magic formula that will solve all their problems. So they buy an off-the-shelf process with no regards to how it even came to be. I feel we need to take a step back and look at the organizational problem. Is your job to get things done in a team environment or waste time and effort reinventing the wheel of how to organize work in software development projects? If you're ther…

If the so called "standard approaches" are in the way of my delivering quality software, I'm absolutely going to call it out and do my best to change it. Most times, if that's impossible, the correct course of action is to leave rather than delivering poor quality.

Re: Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

#62

Post by cassianoleal »

majormajor wrote: post #35
cassianoleal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that organisations want a magic formula that will solve all their problems. So they buy an off-the-shelf process with no regards to how it even came to be. Every time I see something not quite working the way it should in an agile environment, I refer back to the manifesto. Anything that feels like it's going more towards "the things on the right", I point it out. Good managers are willing to listen. M…

It's a similar version of "build vs buy" discussions that happen at every level, from "do we even build an engineering team vs outsource to contractors" to "do we include leftpad or write our own method," and everything in between. There are people out there with high amounts of resistance to using something someone else hasn't recommended or appeared to vet, at every level. It's often about trying to manage downside…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/duenablomstrom1/2018/11/30/nobo...

Re: Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

#63

Post by nikau »

wpietri wrote: post #46
nikau wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because a lot of agile is just plain stupid in real world use. For example, story points are always being converted back to wall time because in the real world you have resources who can work x amount of hours and you need to plan around that. What's the point of using an intermediate unit?

Story points shouldn't get converted back to resource time. They're just a way of ballparking estimates sufficient to let product managers make broad choices, and to help teams keep from getting excessive amounts of worked crammed into an iteration. So don't use them as an intermediate unit. If you want hours, just ask for estimates in hours. I think that's not a great idea for all sorts of reasons, but if you're in…

> So don't use them as an intermediate unit. If you want hours, just ask for estimates in hours

But then you aren't doing Agile!

The whole thing is just stupid terminology for existing things and distils down to "make a todo list and work through it"

Re: Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

#64

Post by righttoolforjob »

wpietri wrote: post #49
righttoolforjob wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is to just do what makes sense, without calling it anything. Junk shit like what scrum has become, for example not discussing technical stuff during standup (why the fuck not? that's what our job is about), artificially splitting stories into 2 week boxes (why the fuck should I break down something that isn't naturally breakable?), why create a card for every thing I'm working on (fucking control frea…

> The alternative is to just do what makes sense, without calling it anything. You argue in favor of not calling things things, and then go on to call a lot of things things. You demonstrate why we need to name things: to talk about them more effectively. What makes sense to one person may not make sense to another. I agree that each team should decide based what's right for them based on the people and the problems.…

Sure you can name things, but there is no agreed upon definition of what scrum or agile means, so don't talk about them. They are useless, unscientific terms.

Re: Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

#65

Post by wpietri »

nikau wrote: post #63
wpietri wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story points shouldn't get converted back to resource time. They're just a way of ballparking estimates sufficient to let product managers make broad choices, and to help teams keep from getting excessive amounts of worked crammed into an iteration. So don't use them as an intermediate unit. If you want hours, just ask for estimates in hours. I think that's not a great idea for all sorts of reasons, but if you're in…

> So don't use them as an intermediate unit. If you want hours, just ask for estimates in hours But then you aren't doing Agile! The whole thing is just stupid terminology for existing things and distils down to "make a todo list and work through it"

That may be what you have experienced it as, but that is not what it is. There are more things, Horatio.

Re: Agile isn’t about speed, it’s about direction

#66

Post by julienreszka »

expazl wrote: post #19
julienreszka wrote: post #5

Give a break Agile is just an adjective. It's the antonym of clumsy/ungraceful.

Yes, an Apple is just a fruit. But a fruit didn't create the iPhone. So perhaps when people talk about Apples upcoming phone, they probably mean the company not the fruit. And when people talk about Agile in relation to software development they likely mean to refer to Agile software development not just the word agile.

Apple has a very clear brand whereas the agile practices are convoluted and meaningless
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