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

Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

quora.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 239 posts

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#71

Post by empath75 »

theworld572 wrote: post #52
Tharkun wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is missing the point of scrum. The scrum master isn't supposed to tell you what the rules are. The rules are whatever the team decides they are. The scrum master is not the boss, they're supposed to be a facilitator...

That sounds like typical scrum-enthusiast double-speak to me! :D https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-scrum "This Guide contains the definition of Scrum. This definition consists of Scrum’s roles, events, artifacts, and the rules that bind them together." Definitions, Rules, Roles, Artifacts etc. Sounds pretty authoritative to me. If it wasn't authoritative, how would you even know what SCRUM "really" is? You cann…

All of the rules say the team is allowed to change anything that doesn’t work for them. Scrum is a set of suggestions for organizing a team, it’s not Moses coming down with tablets from on high.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#73

Post by [deleted] »

malvosenior wrote: post #40
cyknus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would caution against trying to paint "developers at Google" using broad strokes.

There's a lot of irony in saying that about "developers at Google" and then immediately turning around and classifying everyone else as "the masses". Talk about broad strokes!

[deleted]

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#74

Post by ggggtez »

oblio wrote: post #61
ben509 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When human beings are part of an association that is verifiably elite, it is quite common for them to have elitist attitudes.

Elite in compensation, true. But is the average Googler contributing more to humanity than the average teacher? I'm not so sure.

Average seems like a weird measurement. Some Forbes article claims by 2030 the world needs 68 million teachers (I had trouble finding how many currently exist). So, the scale of numbers of teachers and number of engineers is hardly one to one.

Maybe you could say : is the average engineer contributing more to humanity than 1,000 teachers? Or you could go by pay: is the average engineer contributing more than 10 teachers? (guessing on numbers of course)

One to one ratio though? I'd argue: yeah probably. It's indirect effects, but Android/Chromebook/Google Docs... These all have brought computing technology and the internet into the hands of children around the world. Internet access is clearly one of the great opportunities for education. It might be hard to measure, but it clearly has an outsized effect.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#75

Post by grok2 »

Anybody doing Agile/Scrum know how it deals with people issues? It seems like with these practices everyone is on a tight leash -- how does it deal with the fact that real people have a natural ebb and flow in their concentration levels at work or interest in work. If your are scrumming all the time, how do you get slow periods in your work cycle so you can recharge (aka slack-off :-))?

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#76

Post by reallydude »

empath75 wrote: post #63
malvosenior wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of irony in saying that about "developers at Google" and then immediately turning around and classifying everyone else as "the masses". Talk about broad strokes!

That’s not a derogatory term.

That wasn't the implication. The issue is an hypocritical assertion. If treating a large group as a unified actor is improper, then giving another group another label and doing the same thing...because it's that group is in a different classification, is also improper. The fact these views live in the same comment, is ironic.

ie

> I would caution against trying to paint "developers at Google" using broad stroke

> a leapfrog for the masses

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20600789

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#77

Post by TrackerFF »

js2 wrote: post #29

> This type of innovation takes significant up-front design time, and working on components over longer than one week iterations. Because the projects have such simple external interfaces, and so much internal complexity, much of the work is not even visible to “customers”, so there is no way to write customer visible stories about it. This type of software takes 8–20 months to deliver the first working version to th…

The problem, so to speak, is that companies are getting extremely data driven, and constantly need some form of metrics to evaluate their employees.

This again can turn into a culture where doing what's expected is devalued to lowest score - because you have that system where there has to be bottom and top performers.

And you sadly end up with a situation where workers are (almost) embellishing their projects to get more visibility.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#78

Post by otaviokz »

amelius wrote: post #68
js2 wrote: post #29

> This type of innovation takes significant up-front design time, and working on components over longer than one week iterations. Because the projects have such simple external interfaces, and so much internal complexity, much of the work is not even visible to “customers”, so there is no way to write customer visible stories about it. This type of software takes 8–20 months to deliver the first working version to th…

> From being warned I'd be terminated to a promotion in less than six months, with no change in my work, but simply it becoming visible. Whee big company fun. They probably deduced from this that their warning system worked as expected.

I think the probability of you being right is definitely above 50%.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#79

Post by lanstin »

Jtsummers wrote: post #14

This article makes a common mistake: Scrum and Agile are not synonymous. Given that error, the conclusion is nonsense. And besides, even Scrum doesn’t require a delivered product each sprint. Just an updated status and increment completed. If I’m building a new server and client architected system, the early sprints may be getting certain design details down. More documentation than code. Later on, I may have sprints…

When you are at the edge of technology a lot of the initial tasks are the smart people go off and think for a few weeks or months. Talking amongst themselves but not necessarily producing visible things. Just updating their mental state as they search solution space for the best achievable answer. Now, I have worked in a place where that time was accounted for and allowed, but most places the value of it seems lost on management.

Re: Why do developers at Google consider Agile development to be nonsense? (2016)

#80

Post by dbattaglia »

The most toxic example of Agile/Scrum I've come across so far has been in a company that was non-technical at its core but wanted badly to pivot to a SaaS business model. The type of company that 50% of the employees have the word "manager" in their title yet manage no one (Digital Project Manager, Technical Project Manager, Product Manager, etc). I think its just in a lot of companies culture that if they can instill some process, any process really, then the results will follow. And software engineers complaining about the demoralizing effects of being micro-managed by junior coworkers who never wrote a line of code in their life are just typical spoiled tech workers. Other companies I've worked for that used Agile methodology were not all that much better, just somewhat less absurd. I'm glad I've gotten out of that world, its left such a bad taste in my mouth I don't know if I can even look at Agile objectively anymore.
Post reply on HN