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Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

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Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#71

Post by monk_e_boy »

ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

> there's no feedback loop to correct the issues.

Well, there's supposed to be -- Technical Quality - Refactoring.

Common to all flavours of Agile (I lecture agile techniques) sounds like you guys are missing out important parts of agile... but I totally agree with what you are saying. I'm old Skool and grew up with waterfall. I find it really weird teaching students who don't have a spec or UML diagrams or any idea what a software pattern is. Hell, some of them don't bother with a Model layer - not enough time to implement it in a sprint, so why bother? Lol. They get code out the door, but quality code? A-hem, it is possible, but do people do it?

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#72

Post by monk_e_boy »

cwyers wrote: post #26
cwyers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrum != agile. You don't need sprints to be agile. If sprints aren't working for you and your team, then stop doing sprints. If your team can't decide to stop doing sprints, then you're not leading your own agile process and you're not really doing agile.

Let me clarify that -- there are people who are using Scrum to do agile. Scrum is not _against_ agile. But if you are doing two-week sprints because management is chasing the latest fad, without empowering the team, you're not agile, you're just in a Scrum cargo cult.

Exactly this, agile is all about empowering devs, trusting them and allowing them to work.

Sprints are about enforcing feedback from the customer into the loop. If you have a half decent customer they should be happy with any length sprint and releases that make sense.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#73

Post by jboy55 »

satyrnein wrote: post #18
ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

>So the companies always had a successful exit even if the codebase passed onto the acquiring company or to the public investors had major issues.. so at least in my experience there's no feedback loop to correct the issues. In a sense, it sounds like there is nothing to correct! Would moving more slowly and deliberately have improved the exit, or worsened it? Perhaps code quality has only a tenuous link to business…

I've come to expect that code quality has a strong link to success but in sometimes its inversely proportional. What I mean, is that at the Seed/Series A timeframe, I doubt you will see a strong performing company, with a codebase with high quality. I also the odds are against seeing a tech company with billions in revenue (not worth) have a really poor codebase. I can think of plenty of examples where the desire to 'do it right', has cost a company their marketshare.

As much as Netscape vs Microsoft hurt Netscape, the time it took to do NS7 and the quality it shipped with, pushed them back 5-6 years.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#74

Post by 0_gravitas »

satyrnein wrote: post #18
ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

>So the companies always had a successful exit even if the codebase passed onto the acquiring company or to the public investors had major issues.. so at least in my experience there's no feedback loop to correct the issues. In a sense, it sounds like there is nothing to correct! Would moving more slowly and deliberately have improved the exit, or worsened it? Perhaps code quality has only a tenuous link to business…

Perhaps Extreme Go Horse has some wisdom behind it after all

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#75

Post by Aloisius »

kleiba wrote: post #24

Does any one have good (as in: known to actually have had a positive effect in the past) insights on how to convince your manager(s) that (at least their version of) "agile" is not helping the company? My wife works in a company where the managements seems to be quite "proud" to apply "agile methods" but in my wife's opinion, it's more BS bingo than producing a measurable boost in productivity, quality, or any other…

They don't follow the "what you did yesterday, what you plan on doing today, is there anything blocking you" pattern?

And the whole department is on one scrum team?

No one should lack for something to say or have to make anything up. It is a simple status synchronization with your team. The only pressure anyone should be under is remembering what they did the day before and prioritizing what to do today.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#76

Post by wool_gather »

closeparen wrote: post #65
snarf21 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I learned a long time was this: A "bad" process that has complete buy-in and everyone participates in will always outperform a "good" process that has lip service buy-in and disagreements about who does what.

A team that has skilled individuals exercising judgement and thinking critically about tools (for project management as for everything else) will alway outperform one that’s subordinate to a process.

That doesn't negate snarf21's point; a good process with buy-in is of course better than a bad process with buy-in.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#77

Post by mbostleman »

My current experience with a distorted Agile approach is that it is used as an excuse to not have a big design. The idea is to not block on a big design UP FRONT. Not have no design at all. So the platform I'm working on now has been torn down to the foundations and fundamentally rebuilt at least twice because the lead(s) on the project never looked further than one sprint out. Somehow it is expected that an organic design will spring from nothing. Very unfortunate.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#78

Post by ben509 »

drderidder wrote: post #19

Dave Thomas, one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto [1] wrote an article called "Time to Kill Agile" [2] a few years ago (which he subsequently re-titled "Agile is Dead"). He has some good insight on how Agile (the methodology) got to be something very different from what they intended. Originally they were trying to break away from a rigid methodology, not introduce a whole new one. Unfortunately, if you…

Good piece, but this made me chuckle:

> It’s easy to tack the word “agile” onto just about anything. Agility is harder to misappropriate.

I'm pretty sure it'll take more than an extra syllable to save an idea from being dumbed down by marketing people.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#79

Post by Aloisius »

yebyen wrote: post #64
codeflo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you describe is common, but the purpose of the daily really isn’t to boast about your heroic achievements of yesterday, or give a status report to management. That part should be cut out entirely much of the time. A better idea is to plan the current day, identify where someone could use help, where two people need to coordinate more closely or on what issues further discussion is needed and with whom. If…

That's exactly what it's for. To put a finer point on it, a daily stand-up meeting should be no more than 15 minutes long, and about three specific things. Each person should talk about exactly these three things (or less, if you can say that one or more of them are not known or relevant yet): 1. What am I working on now 2. What is in the way of getting this thing done 3. What will I work on next The value of the sta…

15 minutes? Even 5 minutes is long. With an average 7 person scrum team, they should take no more than 3 minutes.

I disagree talking about yesterday provides no value. Talking about yesterday, in my experience, dramatically improves people's ability to accurately identify and prioritize what they have to do today.

Plus, it provides a forum to communicate unexpected interruptions that may need to be dealt with by the scrum master.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#80

Post by kleiba »

Aloisius wrote: post #75
kleiba wrote: post #24

Does any one have good (as in: known to actually have had a positive effect in the past) insights on how to convince your manager(s) that (at least their version of) "agile" is not helping the company? My wife works in a company where the managements seems to be quite "proud" to apply "agile methods" but in my wife's opinion, it's more BS bingo than producing a measurable boost in productivity, quality, or any other…

They don't follow the "what you did yesterday, what you plan on doing today, is there anything blocking you" pattern? And the whole department is on one scrum team? No one should lack for something to say or have to make anything up. It is a simple status synchronization with your team. The only pressure anyone should be under is remembering what they did the day before and prioritizing what to do today.

No and yes for your two questions respectively (although I'm not 100% sure about the "no" to the first question).

That's what I meant when I said that their interpretation of agile seems really pointless. It seems like it's more important to have the "agile" label stuck to themselves than whether whatever they think that labels stands for brings about any positive effects.

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