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Agile Is a Tainted Term

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Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#81

Post by euroderf »

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

Last time I checked, Agile had zero to say about documentation. Is there any improvement on this front ?

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#82

Post by web3-is-a-scam »

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

I work at a company that did Agile/Scrum ok - it wasn’t perfect but we had regular retros and we tried to improve our processes and we were given some leeway from management to have some of the work required to support those processes into our sprints.

Then the CTO left, and was never replaced, then the layoffs came and a competent PM was replaced with a junior. Entire design department replaced with a single junior as well. Engineering gutted. Ok, lay-offs happen but at least I still have a job.

Then came “we’re waterfall now”. You know what didn’t come with it? Actual planning, documentation or specs or anything typical of “waterfall”. Estimates are now guessed before anything is defined and turned into commitments. You know what we still had? “Daily stand ups”, “backlog grooming”, two week “sprints”, and no retrospectives. No opportunity or agency to try to make things better - just endlessly stuck in my own personal hell.

Now we have projects that are supposed to take 2 months now taking 6. We have last minute spec changes that require massive rewrites because UAT isn’t done until the end of the entire project. “PM is slow to write out requirements” so we’re basically expected to just guess what they are based on very small selection of unfinished design flows.

And of course, executive wonders “why does engineering take so long to deliver”.

I started calling this “scrumerfall” or even ”fragile”. It’s basically the worst of both with none of the positives.

I don’t know what point I’m actually trying to make…just get like ranting and this seemed like a good time lol

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#83

Post by TheCoelacanth »

hu3 wrote: post #56
viraptor wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds familiar... Oh ! That's where agile ideas come from! http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

That existed before agile.

Three of the original signers of the Agile Manifesto are also the main people involved with creating XP[1][2][3].

The Agile Manifesto was just a bunch of people who were already doing XP, Scrum or some other lightweight process getting together and writing down the similarities between what they were doing. It's a blanket term invented to describe a variety of different processes, not an actual process.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Beck

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Jeffries

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#84

Post by drewcoo »

SPBS wrote: post #3

I wish more people understood this. Nobody should be arguing for Agile anymore. Don't say "no, but-" or "that is not what the Manifesto says-" because you're only strengthening the case for Agile as propagated by the fraudmasters simply by virtue of it sharing the same name as the thing you're arguing for. Leave the term behind, find something else.

> Leave the term behind, find something else.

Asking software engineers to name things? Now you have two problems.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#85

Post by drewcoo »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #75
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They couldn't be more precise than that because each team and project has their own set of constraints and capabilities that determines how they achieve the Agile goals. I think the only problem is that the authors took for granted that everyone understands that it takes an actual empirical process and not just a bunch of magic incantations to do that, like the enterprise world seems to think.

The way you word it, it sounds very much like a cargo cult phenomenon. Copying the external trappings (Towers, runways, procedures.) , not the underlying goals or process (shipping cargo across the pacific). I only do a small number of projects myself, but my understanding is that in a lot of places, people might follow "the agile process", rather than that they are aiming at actual Capital-A-Agility (where any and a…

It was a general philosophy of how people can work together.

It lacked any of the specifics that typify cargo cults. It was the exact opposite of cargo cult - an actual understanding without any specific required rituals.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#86

Post by Viliam1234 »

SigmundA wrote: post #70
i_have_an_idea wrote: post #8

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the…

>You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid. Just the typical "No True Scotsman" fallacy [1], happens all the time when there is no good defense of the position. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

By the same logic, there are no actual quantum physicists, because various "quantum healers" outnumber them. So we need to admit that everything "quantum" is nonsense, otherwise we are committing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

Sometimes the fakes simply do outnumber the real ones.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#87

Post by bruce343434 »

EchoChamberMan wrote: post #73
bruce343434 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has been, in your experience, a repeatable process for quality engineering? How much does it depend on the kind of software one is engineering, or is it applicable to any kind of software with any kind of constraints?

Repeatable processes require long term strategy. [edit] Too many of these people want tomatos, so they plant a tomato, when really they want seasonal tomatos, and need to consider a farm, and take into account growth cycles. The term I like is "sustainable development."

I was hoping for more actionable, or at least concrete, advice...

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#88

Post by thimp »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #59
thimp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen agile done well once. Yes it does happen. The process was not described, spoken of or even considered. It just existed between a few like minded decent engineers. Their manager got an “agile PM” forced on them and it broke. The problem is charlatans, dictators and career ticket shufflers that deliver little to no ROI and generally abject chaos.

Quality engineering has to be *repeatable*. If it’s not described, and only works via the “minds of a few engineers”, you get amateur treehouse-quality engineering like the 737 MAX. I guess chance can make it work well like that “once” sporadically, but when you need to touch that code again to maintain it, we go back to the amateur treehouse.

I think that's a vast simplification. It doesn't have to be repeatable at all. Objectively repeatability is about elimination of waste and expenditure. The big one is qualification and testing because that's what filters all the crap out. Actually I've worked as an engineer where we had to throw 20% of the products we built out because they didn't pass qualification.

And of course that is where the cost savings are usually made because it is seen as a null function in some businesses. It creates waste and reduces delivery and ROI. Those are all symptoms of other problems in the business but that's how it is generally perceived. And sometimes clients are happy to receive muck if it's cheap.

But that's also how we get planes that crash and Microsoft firing their entire QA and delivering shit for the last half a decade.

And that in turn is because management and project management culture is data driven by people who have no idea what the fuck they are doing whatsoever.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#89

Post by thimp »

hkt wrote: post #71
praptak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organisations make it very hard to be that manager. On top of the human tendency to overmanage there's often push from top for "more visibility and accountability" which results in forcing stuff rather than facilitating.

Blame Mckinsey and their ilk: "what can be measured can be managed". (I refuse to utter the above phrase without accompanying it with tjis: "not everything that counts can be counted")

It's worse than that. Any sufficiently motivated person can phrase data any way they choose, particularly when their bonus is tied to it. Nor does the consumer of the data always validate that data. I've never seen a manager read a report they requested. That is on top of your suffix which I agree with a well.
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