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Agile Is a Tainted Term

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Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#91

Post by Kim_Bruning »

drewcoo wrote: post #85
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you've read my comment backwards!

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#92

Post by EchoChamberMan »

euroderf wrote: post #81
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 ?

The second value of the agile manifesto is "Working software over comprehensive documentation." It is important to remember also "That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

https://agilemanifesto.org/

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#93

Post by watwut »

whstl wrote: post #61
hu3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That existed before agile.

Good on agile for restating what works and putting it in an fashionable, easy to understand framework, then. But bad on agile for letting charlatans co-opt the term.

Agile does not really works. It sometimes works, exceptionally, usually the more you try to do the by the book agile the worst it gets. Every single time they make agile reform, everything stats to suck and everything turns into ritualized micro management.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#94

Post by EchoChamberMan »

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…

How would one go about generalizing goals in the cargo cult example? To me, it would be something like "achieve your business goals," which while true, is not super useful. Maybe that would have been a better description though, given how much commodification is prioritized.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#95

Post by EchoChamberMan »

bruce343434 wrote: post #87
EchoChamberMan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Some complexity is irreducible.

As mentioned by user "phkahler":

> 1) Come to work.

> 2) Look at the current state.

> 3) Decide what the product needs from you.

> 4) Do that.

> 5) Use git.

> Steps 2 and 3 may involve communication. Step 5 is tracking changes. Have a PM that tracks main things people are working on and estimated dates (not dictated dates).

> This is how my current job works and we are unbelievably productive.

[edit]

I like the book "phoenix project," and I think they wrote "Team Topologies" which I am curious to read.

[edit]

In general, psychological safety was the number one factor for productive teams, according to a massive google study. From this viewpoint, it's easy to see why there are so few productive teams, as there is little to no safety for most people. Remember though, "There are no silver bullets."

[Edit]

The goal should be continuous delivery imo.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#96

Post by viraptor »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #69
viraptor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that was a joke, but it's Zed so... No, you can't replace customer collaboration with more programming. When you're in a programming hole of misunderstood solutions, you can't fix that by doing more programming. When things keep changing without good reasons, you can't fix that by doing more programming, etc.

He's not saying replacing customer collaboration with programming. He's saying replace bleeding clients dry under the pretense of customer collaboration with programming.

He's saying the customer collaboration is just a con for bleeding clients dry and he should just do programming. I read "just" as only/instead in this case.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#97

Post by thimp »

gitfan86 wrote: post #32
Scubabear68 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charlatans are a serious problem in software engineering today.

The good news is that it is easy for engineers to start their own companies and keep these people out at first at least. You will still get cold emails and LinkedIn messages from these people but you don't have to respond

It's somewhat more difficult to start their own companies and eat though which is why a lot of us eat shit and work with project managers.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#98

Post by whstl »

watwut wrote: post #93
whstl wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good on agile for restating what works and putting it in an fashionable, easy to understand framework, then. But bad on agile for letting charlatans co-opt the term.

Agile does not really works. It sometimes works, exceptionally, usually the more you try to do the by the book agile the worst it gets. Every single time they make agile reform, everything stats to suck and everything turns into ritualized micro management.

I'm all for criticizing agile etc if it doesn't work, but this is such a generic complaint.

What's "by the book" agile? Scrum? The things in the manifesto? Something that some rando Scrummaster said?

And who is micromanaging? Both the Agile Manifesto and Scrum are about "self-organizing" teams. If someone is micromanaging, how is that self-organizing?

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#99

Post by koreth1 »

Scrum is the thing that has tainted "agile" in my opinion, because Scrum is so widespread that many people think they're the same thing.

Leaving aside the "agile is a philosophy, not a methodology" argument, there are well-defined agile methodologies other than Scrum. I've worked at a couple Kanban shops and, while our dev processes were far from perfect, most of the things people routinely hate about "agile" just didn't come up at all because they're actually Scrum features.

If the thing you don't like involves the words "sprint" or "standup," you are complaining about Scrum, not agile.

Re: Agile Is a Tainted Term

#100

Post by lll-o-lll »

whstl wrote: post #62
lll-o-lll wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you need a process that can be flexible, able to respond to change, some might say… agile ;-) I kid, but I think the early proponents of Scrum and similar were trying to achieve a loose framework to do exactly what you’re talking about. The modern incarnations of these can be horrific, but the original intent was always to empower teams to make their own process. Ahh well. Like so many good ideas (democra…

The modern variations of Scrum and Agile exist to empower certain people to rule over teams without having to do much, if any, work. The team is self-organizing but person X is the decision maker in the process. There is an engineering manager, but they will get overruled by person X more often than not. The framework is simple, but person X will add new rules. Agile/Scrum says people must understand the domain, but…

> The modern variations of Scrum and Agile exist to empower certain people to rule over teams without having to do much, if any, work.

I don’t think that’s why they exist, but I do think the structure is not robust to a large number of dysfunctions. This one included.

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