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Agile Is Dead

agilepilled.com

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Re: Agile Is Dead

#61

Post by alganet »

jajko wrote: post #37
psunavy03 wrote: post #20

Dumb shits misapplying Agile because "we do standups" are dead. The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff in such a way that they can validate their assumptions and get customer feedback as soon as possible. Not how well you "do Scrum," "increase your velocity," or any of that trash. But actually applying these concepts breaks some managers' brains, and then we get the…

Well, yes, but - it clearly doesn't work well to only come up with a good idea like that. After initial momentum, people often took it elsewhere, or abandoned. Which tells you a lot about people out there. Maybe one can't force a shiny cool shoe on a feet incapable of using it well, even if it would be great in many aspects. Maybe we need something that is easier adaptable by real people making up real teams and orga…

The most adaptable, flexible, maleable methodology is and will always be XGH.

https://medium.com/@dekaah/22-axioms-of-the-extreme-go-horse...

Re: Agile Is Dead

#62

Post by bluGill »

alganet wrote: post #30
ryandvm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agile is like communism - it sounds like a great idea. Except it never seems to work anywhere, and everywhere that it turns into a train wreck consisting of 45 minute daily stand-ups and 3 hour meetings arguing about T-shirt sizes or whether points are equivalent to time or not, the only explanation anyone ever proffers is, "well, you weren't doing Agile right". No fucking shit. Nobody can do Agile right. I would arg…

Agile is like communism. Lots of people like to hang external ideas to it. Some valid, some not. Points, t-shirt sizes, figmas, etc... these are _tools_ and _processes_. Why the hell are you complaining about it when it says very clearly that you should focus on people and interactions?

Because I have real problems. People and interactions as a focus shows me where those problems are, and now I need solutions to solve them. Those tools and processes that agile often uses are the type of things I need to make my people and interactions work. (or at least that is their promise) I should not be developing my own tools when someone else already has some that works.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#63

Post by bluGill »

alganet wrote: post #57
skeeter2020 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's more than a vibe, the challenge is it's "Here's a bunch of things that can help; pick and use what works but don't be dogmatic about it". This is impossible to scale, as by definition it's anti-scale, which is why companies run into massive problems and pervert agile into whatever they have now.

If that's the problem, then it's easy. Do not think about the tools. Think about small improvements that can move the team in a more productive and sustainable (agile) way. Simple things. Like putting a timer on long meetings until people get used to not extending it. Or putting a limit on the work pipeline between the developer and the tester to avoid overwhelming testing sessions. In my opinion, you are not suppose…

> Think about small improvements that can move the team

Which team? My team of 5 people or the entire project of several hundred? Focusing on the small teams finds a lot of local maximums that are very bad for the entire project. Many of the small changes small teams want to make are not possible because they would impact some of those several hundred other developers. Often small pain for us is much better than the pain our change would force on those others.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#64

Post by shalmanese »

We should just accept the euphemism treadmill is an iron law of the universe and every 10 years, we come up with a new term for insiders as the old term gets degraded.

The problem now is people use "agile" to mean anything from the 2001 agile manifesto meaning of the term to the 2024 F500 meaning and that's too long a span of time so the word has lost all communicative value. You can either engage in a fool's errand trying to drag the word back to the original meaning or accepting reality and letting people have it and come up with some new term like "katana development" or some bullshit that means essentially the same thing.

The "Observability" crew are good at this, I feel like every 10 years, there's a new coat of paint on essentially the same basic SRE concepts. Like how we went from Oriental to Asian American to AAPI, the mental burden of keeping up with these language changes serves as a basic shibboleth to who is paying attention enough to developments in the field.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#65

Post by bluGill »

graypegg wrote: post #38
zelphirkalt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to reverse the roles or how they play out in companies in day to day life. We need other people than engineers to _ask_ for certain changes or _make suggestions_. Not a product manager, who takes ideas from other departments as law and _makes demands_ out of that for the engineers, and then by the might of their management position push the changes through. We could be better off with for example a de…

I think every good experience I've had as part of a team, was because the business people, the designers, and the engineers were all respectful of each other, and had no power over one another. So I totally agree! Nothing stops that. People always imagine every team has to be some little internal war, and I think the whole methodology-mill industry is built around that belief. People CAN'T compromise or work together…

That works when there is 1 engineer and one marketer. When there are hundreds of engineers and many marketers you risk the marketer unknowingly asks an engineer who isn't the right one and that person over promises not realized the full scope of the problem and how it will affect others who are also making their own promises.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#66

Post by alganet »

bluGill wrote: post #63
alganet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the problem, then it's easy. Do not think about the tools. Think about small improvements that can move the team in a more productive and sustainable (agile) way. Simple things. Like putting a timer on long meetings until people get used to not extending it. Or putting a limit on the work pipeline between the developer and the tester to avoid overwhelming testing sessions. In my opinion, you are not suppose…

> Think about small improvements that can move the team Which team? My team of 5 people or the entire project of several hundred? Focusing on the small teams finds a lot of local maximums that are very bad for the entire project. Many of the small changes small teams want to make are not possible because they would impact some of those several hundred other developers. Often small pain for us is much better than the…

By team I mean "the people you interact with [the most]". Those who impact your routine and are impacted by you most directly.

As I mentioned before, there is no one size fits all recipe. And there are no multiple recipes of different sizes.

There are infinite variables a group of people can express. There is no point in making recipes, agile is about ideals.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#67

Post by cholantesh »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #46
ryandvm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agile is like communism - it sounds like a great idea. Except it never seems to work anywhere, and everywhere that it turns into a train wreck consisting of 45 minute daily stand-ups and 3 hour meetings arguing about T-shirt sizes or whether points are equivalent to time or not, the only explanation anyone ever proffers is, "well, you weren't doing Agile right". No fucking shit. Nobody can do Agile right. I would arg…

it's a lot less like communism and much more like a co-op or member-owned/lead organization - which can and totally do work. Think a bunch of farmers banding together to start a credit union vs. a big centrally planned org.

Co-operatives and worker self-management can and have existed under communism.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#68

Post by alganet »

bluGill wrote: post #65
graypegg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every good experience I've had as part of a team, was because the business people, the designers, and the engineers were all respectful of each other, and had no power over one another. So I totally agree! Nothing stops that. People always imagine every team has to be some little internal war, and I think the whole methodology-mill industry is built around that belief. People CAN'T compromise or work together…

That works when there is 1 engineer and one marketer. When there are hundreds of engineers and many marketers you risk the marketer unknowingly asks an engineer who isn't the right one and that person over promises not realized the full scope of the problem and how it will affect others who are also making their own promises.

A company with hundreds of engineers and anyone of them can overpromise on some random feature?

Sounds like a widespread communication issue.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#69

Post by graypegg »

bluGill wrote: post #65
graypegg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think every good experience I've had as part of a team, was because the business people, the designers, and the engineers were all respectful of each other, and had no power over one another. So I totally agree! Nothing stops that. People always imagine every team has to be some little internal war, and I think the whole methodology-mill industry is built around that belief. People CAN'T compromise or work together…

That works when there is 1 engineer and one marketer. When there are hundreds of engineers and many marketers you risk the marketer unknowingly asks an engineer who isn't the right one and that person over promises not realized the full scope of the problem and how it will affect others who are also making their own promises.

I'd rather have a (high!) chance of that happening as a mistake low down on the hierarchy tree, where it's just the marketer (or maybe a region's marketing team) and two engineering teams involved that have unfuck their situation, than high up at the top where the C-suite only talks about the roadmap with the marketers and the bad decisions just wash over the whole company.

Don't think there's any solution that fits all scales of head counts in all fields of work. Middle management exists because employing 1000 people to each do something specific is inherently a hard task. Are they doing the thing, are they stopping other people from doing their thing, have they signed this form, have they got their benefits for this, are they getting paid the right amount, etc.

You actually save a lot of hassle with hierarchy, in the people-wrangling group of tasks.

But I still think some inefficiency at the lower level between motivated product teams with a few mandates each, is a better long term bet than assuming the same reasoning for middle management to exist applies to other fields. Engineering/design/marketing isn't people-wrangling so we shouldn't assume the same solutions that work for wrangling more people work for shipping more products.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#70

Post by JodieBenitez »

Rotundo wrote: post #51
JodieBenitez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it too, but was always a problem for me: > Customer collaboration -- over contract negotiation Customer is often too busy with his own work to collaborate meaningfully.

If the customer doesn't think their project is important, why should I?

hence why a contract is still important.
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