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Agile Is a Glass Cannon

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Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#71

Post by dopylitty »

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…

One thing about your comment that a lot of people are missing is that you mention that it's an infrastructure transformation project.

I think that's important because agile as I've seen it doesn't work well for infrastructure (networking especially). The core ideas of agile just don't fit.

For one there really isn't a customer who can test an infrastructure project in small increments. Imagine trying to deploy a network in small chunks. Who is the customer who would be 'testing' the chunks? How would that even work?

For two infrastructure really does have to be designed end to end because the cost of rework is so high. Especially once actual applications are running on it. Sure you can make tweaks here and there as the project evolves but you can't release it to business applications until you're pretty sure it's going to be stable.

I'm sure there's some methodology that would work better than waterfall for infrastructure projects but I haven't seen an agile methodology that would fit it.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#72

Post by karmakaze »

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…

It's well established that "Agile" with a capital-A has become a self-serving industry and cargo cult. The original manifesto has to be renamed to distinguish itself from that, which some call agile little-a, or agility, etc. Whenever there's a negative post on Agile, it's of the former identification and not the original motivations or methods.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#73

Post by eurasiantiger »

eesmith wrote: post #57
eurasiantiger wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, the developer, have one customer: you, the software vendor. The software vendor sells a software product, not the developer.

Next, tell me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Assuming your definition makes sense, what are the "interactions ... processes and tools" between me-the-vendor and me-the-developer? What is the comprehensive documentation that I'm supposed to avoid? What is the contract negotiation?

Think about it.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#74

Post by donio »

fwlr wrote: post #53

“It works when engineers and management are both highly skilled” is hardly a glowing recommendation for a management process. Only a management system so bad that it is tantamount to sabotage would not work when everyone involved is highly skilled. The most productive management system I ever operated under was “the founder DMs ‘how’s it going’ whenever he remembers to” and that worked great because we were all skill…

How would you end up with good mgmt and bad eng? I suppose it could happen as a temporary situation when new mgmt takes over a failing organization.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#75

Post by eesmith »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #73
eesmith wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next, tell me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Assuming your definition makes sense, what are the "interactions ... processes and tools" between me-the-vendor and me-the-developer? What is the comprehensive documentation that I'm supposed to avoid? What is the contract negotiation?

Think about it.

I've spent over 20 years thinking about it, and not been able to figure it out.

Since it's clear to you, perhaps you can clarify how the Agile Manifesto applies to software product sales when there's a single developer and once-per-year product cycles?

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#76

Post by therealdrag0 »

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…

Note that’s a specific flavor of Agile related to Scrum, not the only flavor.

Personally I do 2 stand-ups a week, and a monthly sprint board (Kanban like?) with no sprint planning or any other process/system meetings. Any other meeting is as-hoc on demand. Working well!

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#77

Post by pg_1234 »

donio wrote: post #74
fwlr wrote: post #53

“It works when engineers and management are both highly skilled” is hardly a glowing recommendation for a management process. Only a management system so bad that it is tantamount to sabotage would not work when everyone involved is highly skilled. The most productive management system I ever operated under was “the founder DMs ‘how’s it going’ whenever he remembers to” and that worked great because we were all skill…

How would you end up with good mgmt and bad eng? I suppose it could happen as a temporary situation when new mgmt takes over a failing organization.

... with a small budget.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#78

Post by therealdrag0 »

keyraycheck wrote: post #38
onethought wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by the question? Non-agile people? You mean people that don’t do scrum? Or do you want someone to step forward and say: “I’m really rigid and refuse to change direction once I start, this is how I get things done…” If you mean no scrum, simple, no card wall, tasks are epics, trust people to know what to do and let them do it. Help people when needed.

I would love to know how people work. I wonder what is the alternative. The board is far from only agile practice and nit obligatory either. Even Epic sounds like an agile term.

My team of 7 (inc manager and pm) does 2 stand-ups a week (doing it in slack is okay if needed), and never sprint planning or any other recurring meetings. Any other planning or meetings is done as hoc as needed. We usually have ~3 projects going on in parallel so not many cooks in kitchen and not a lot of syncing required. We use jira for tickets and have a “sprint board”, but it’s super casual just a place to track stuff and I roll the sprint once a month without any meeting or ceremony.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#79

Post by fwlr »

donio wrote: post #74
fwlr wrote: post #53

“It works when engineers and management are both highly skilled” is hardly a glowing recommendation for a management process. Only a management system so bad that it is tantamount to sabotage would not work when everyone involved is highly skilled. The most productive management system I ever operated under was “the founder DMs ‘how’s it going’ whenever he remembers to” and that worked great because we were all skill…

How would you end up with good mgmt and bad eng? I suppose it could happen as a temporary situation when new mgmt takes over a failing organization.

If engineers are making the hiring decisions, as was the trend for a while, and they make bad hiring decisions. Or if the hiring department is bad. Or if managers are good at managing but bad at hiring. Lots of ways, hiring is hard.

Re: Agile Is a Glass Cannon

#80

Post by onethought »

keyraycheck wrote: post #38
onethought wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by the question? Non-agile people? You mean people that don’t do scrum? Or do you want someone to step forward and say: “I’m really rigid and refuse to change direction once I start, this is how I get things done…” If you mean no scrum, simple, no card wall, tasks are epics, trust people to know what to do and let them do it. Help people when needed.

I would love to know how people work. I wonder what is the alternative. The board is far from only agile practice and nit obligatory either. Even Epic sounds like an agile term.

I was using the term to find common ground. I don’t call them epics, just they are a big thing.

Scrum reminds me of the old adage about measuring a beach, you can measure it by sight, or by using a yardstick, or by counting grains of sand in a row. Scrum sits too close to counting sand, I prefer to be at the yardstick level.

There is an idiocy to scrum that involves/wastes the whole team on simple planning tasks that could be more effectively done by a single person. This is compounded with practices like mobbing… It removes craft from software and just makes it lowest common denominator.

Agile manifesto is still great and relevant. But that’s not what people mean when they say Agile

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