Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Agile Is a Glass Cannon

tomdalling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 86 posts

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#61

Post by mongol »

redpenguin101 wrote: post #58
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.

I think you have that exactly backwards. ONLY successful ideas are being debated more than 20 years after they are proposed. Only successful ideas spawn reaction and counter-reaction, which lead to its evolution - which you say is not happening, but certainly is, as evidenced by the tree of methodologies that branched from it. In that respect (which might not be the one the coiners hoped for), capital A agile has bee…

If it was successful, it would be so normal that there would be no argument about it. It would be taken for granted as the platform which other improvements are built on. It would be like water to fish. That is not what I see.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#62

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

jdlshore wrote: post #19
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? Eh, not really. Agile is barely practiced by any companies. What most practice is a gawdawful abomination of micromanagement and iterative waterfall that they have the audacity to call it “Agile.” Agile is clearly defined in the Agile Manifesto. (Don’t forget the principles on a second page.) All you have to do is treat it like a checklist and you’ll…

Oh, I completely agree that what is called Agile is about as far away from the original manifesto as can be.

It could only really work in exploratory, high trust, high performing environments in my opinion. I've seen that rarely.

Contracts are pretty much in direct opposition to agile practices. Most organisations won't sign an open ended committment to get something without that being defined up front.

What companies call agile seems to be a synonym for faster releases, and faster time to market for the business. It is more agile from their perspective, just not for the practitioners!

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#63

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

drewcoo wrote: post #17

Fair enough. Agile was a response to heavy process. And systems where people's jobs were all about adding more process to the already heavy process. Process hell. In the couple of decades since little "a" agile really got adoption: 1. many people have not seen v-model or spiral model and their attendant process wonks 2. agile was turned into Agile and became a way to micromanage, first micromanagement with no rules,…

Well, not sure process hell was eradicated, although it ironically moved to the very people who were supposed to be freed of it!

What has changed is that the business expects to be able to push new features through quickly with faster releases. In the past, it took a long time for the business to get changes made.

Part of that I think was that highly technical departments had more control over their output and schedule. It was all mysterious to everyone else. If the business wanted to do something, there would be meetings and documents and analysis and approval decisions. It was hard, it was complex.

As technology has become commoditised and less mysterious I think the power of the techical wizards has waned. So the business likes the idea they can just ask for stuff and it gets released fairly quickly and with much less ceremony and negotiation from their perspective.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#64

Post by boyakasha »

jayd16 wrote: post #13

Kinda misses the entire point of 'agile' which is a way to adjust to and gather changing requirements in an iterative process. It's a risk _mitigation_ strategy. I'm not sure I agree that anything is a glass cannon because it could work but you could also do it wrong so it could fail. If a team can't pull off agile what do they think would have been a safer strategy?

> It's a risk _mitigation_ strategy.

It's designed to mitigate _delivery_ risk, not _organisational_ risk.

> If a team can't pull off agile what do they think would have been a safer strategy?

I would probably argue that Scrum (which I barely consider to be "agile") is more resilient to inexperience, and therefore lower risk. It's the McDonalds of processes. You're not going to get amazing results, but it will still operate despite hiring a bunch of inexperienced people into it.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#65

Post by drewcoo »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #63
drewcoo wrote: post #17

Fair enough. Agile was a response to heavy process. And systems where people's jobs were all about adding more process to the already heavy process. Process hell. In the couple of decades since little "a" agile really got adoption: 1. many people have not seen v-model or spiral model and their attendant process wonks 2. agile was turned into Agile and became a way to micromanage, first micromanagement with no rules,…

Well, not sure process hell was eradicated, although it ironically moved to the very people who were supposed to be freed of it! What has changed is that the business expects to be able to push new features through quickly with faster releases. In the past, it took a long time for the business to get changes made. Part of that I think was that highly technical departments had more control over their output and schedu…

> Well, not sure process hell was eradicated

My point is that process hell was not eradicated. And in most instances, we ended up with process hell plus micromanagement.

> the business expects to be able to push new features through quickly with faster releases

Oh, I f'in' wish . . . Not enough companies want rapid release, a.k.a. low-risk, customer-centric culture. If more did, I'd have more work because I can do that really well, but managers assume provably true things are magic, because . . . professional managers.

> As technology has become commoditised [sic] and less mysterious

That is a whole ton of crap, son. Tech is not lumber or oranges or coal. It's not a g'damned commodity because we are not commodities. Much as far-distant managers of funds would like to think otherwise. (Or think what they do is different from what we do, in fact.)

Nor is it mysterious. It's more logical than most professions, even the (other?) degreed ones! Ask me to write code to do FOO while robbing BAR to pay BAZ and I can do that and prove to you that it works. This ain't physics or psychology or philosophy . . . I can make it work and prove it works. No hand-waving. No nonsense. Works. Period.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#66

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

drewcoo wrote: post #65
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not sure process hell was eradicated, although it ironically moved to the very people who were supposed to be freed of it! What has changed is that the business expects to be able to push new features through quickly with faster releases. In the past, it took a long time for the business to get changes made. Part of that I think was that highly technical departments had more control over their output and schedu…

> Well, not sure process hell was eradicated My point is that process hell was not eradicated. And in most instances, we ended up with process hell plus micromanagement. > the business expects to be able to push new features through quickly with faster releases Oh, I f'in' wish . . . Not enough companies want rapid release, a.k.a. low-risk, customer-centric culture. If more did, I'd have more work because I can do th…

It certainly was more mysterious to most back then. My first experience of computing was in an air conditioned room, there were spinning tapes and flashing lights and staff wore white coats. That was in the late 1970s.

It has gradually become less of a bastion of technical wizards and more of a commodity service to the business and society at large, like getting electricity and water.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#67

Post by ljf »

Ekaros wrote: post #59
ljf wrote: post #3

Good article. I think the issue is the often 'higher ups' want 'Agile' as they've heard it is faster and/or cheaper - missing the part that it is faster and cheaper to fail with agile. If you know exactly what you want and are happy to wait, then an agile methodology probably isn't for you. If you need to test something out or scratch an itch now , then agile might be a good fit (depending on the skills/buy in/experi…

You can build a house with agile methodology. And I think many have been... You might be able to live in one, but surely you don't want to buy one. As these are probably not legal in this day and age and mostly done by do-it-yourself self-builders. That is they are not code compliant. Like electricity might or might not burn down the house, there might or might not be leaks all over the place. And mold and so on is p…

Yes you can do it, and it is exactly what my father did while living in a caravan on his land. Sorted a place to wash, then cook, then sleep for each of the children. I never said you can't do it, just it isn't how it is normally done.

But it is not what is normally done, as it comes with its own costs. The benefits to him were clear, but most people just want to move in once it is built and not have the extra expense of iterative 'releases' of their house.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#68

Post by ResearchCode »

carlmr wrote: post #31
jayd16 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Planning" meetings are also about alignment and information sharing. It's probably not about asserting dominance.

Alignment and information sharing should happen through collaboration, PR review, and PoCs. You don't need these "planning" meetings.

But the agile salesmen can't do code reviews.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#69

Post by ResearchCode »

saiya-jin wrote: post #44
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 pe…

Those 10 minute meetings are 5 hours of lost time for deep work each week. Daily status reports are excessive. "Sprints" in general don't work in my experience, they are unnecessary overhead. You want to work in something more towards half-year projects, not two week "sprints".

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#70

Post by ResearchCode »

keyraycheck wrote: post #10

I have a question to non-agile people? How do you work and get things done?

Probably similar to you but without "sprints" or "stand-ups" or reporting to "product owners", "agile coaches" or "business analysts". You would work on "epics", or projects as you would call them more dignifiedly.
Post reply on HN