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Agile Is Dead

agilepilled.com

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Re: Agile Is Dead

#91

Post by bumby »

psunavy03 wrote: post #20

Dumb shits misapplying Agile because "we do standups" are dead. The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff in such a way that they can validate their assumptions and get customer feedback as soon as possible. Not how well you "do Scrum," "increase your velocity," or any of that trash. But actually applying these concepts breaks some managers' brains, and then we get the…

>The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff

This is my sticking point. The whole idea of process-focus is that you can rarely count on having "the right people working on the right stuff." Sometimes the "right person" today isn't the right person tomorrow because they're dealing with an illness or emotional event at home or something else that throws them off their game. The whole point of process control is that reality doesn't match an idealistic notion of "the right person on the right job at the right time".

Re: Agile Is Dead

#92

Post by JKCalhoun »

ebiester wrote: post #56
JKCalhoun wrote: post #31

I happen to believe you get "quality software" by giving devs "ownership" of a piece of the software. And by ownership I mean they come back to it on every revision of the software. They add the new features, they fix its bugs ... they can burn it to the ground if they like for reasons of technical debt (or because they feel like it). "But what if that engineer leaves and no one else understands the code?" I hear you…

I mean, that works if you give them ownership of the budget and revenue targets. That means if the product does not meet the revenue targets, the development team decreases and the development team has to decide which of their developers are losing their jobs. That way, when the dev wants to burn it down, they are playing with their own consequences. Autonomy comes with consequences.

> Autonomy comes with consequences.

Agree. And being allowed to embrace the consequences is, IMHO, how you get people to rise to their best.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#93

Post by psunavy03 »

bumby wrote: post #91
psunavy03 wrote: post #20

Dumb shits misapplying Agile because "we do standups" are dead. The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff in such a way that they can validate their assumptions and get customer feedback as soon as possible. Not how well you "do Scrum," "increase your velocity," or any of that trash. But actually applying these concepts breaks some managers' brains, and then we get the…

> The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff This is my sticking point. The whole idea of process-focus is that you can rarely count on having "the right people working on the right stuff." Sometimes the "right person" today isn't the right person tomorrow because they're dealing with an illness or emotional event at home or something else that throws them off their gam…

The whole point of Agile is to organically grow what processes make sense in that particular context, not "process control" for its own sake. Even Scrum was designed to be deliberately incomplete so organizations can do what makes sense for them, not just blindly follow a checklist.

And it's not about someone not being "the right person" because they're human. It's about having the right skillsets on the team working on the right products, architected in such a way as to be releaseable easily enough to be responsive to what customers need.

What needs to die are managers stuffing unrelated work into one team, splitting work across teams so dependencies get ping-ponged back and forth, and then making people do 30-45 minute dailies because it's a status report, not a team sync.

What is dead is TACO Agile . . . Terms And Ceremonies Only. Although it was arguably never alive in the first place, more of a shambling zombie with about as much brains.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#94

Post by dllthomas »

alganet wrote: post #36
dllthomas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Individuals and interactions -- over processes and tools That's why I proposed having a "build team" where you ask an individual to run your compiles for you, rather than dealing with an impersonal CI system. More Agile. The old Manifesto sounds nice, but it's more a reaction (overreaction?) to some pathologies of the time than something that will get you very far without otherwise knowing what you should be doing.

Fair enough. The original reaction for that pathology is "The Mythical Man-Month", it's what started everything. From my point of view, we're still man-monthin'. The Agile folks just translated a personal reflection from Fred Brooks into a culture (then some companies made it into a cult). Anyway. In your opinion, what the pathologies for _this_ time would be?

I think there's some space between MMM and agile and the former (as problem statement more than proposed solutions) holds up better. It's been a while since I last read it, though.

> Anyway. In your opinion, what the pathologies for _this_ time would be?

That's certainly an interesting question; I don't have a ready answer.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#95

Post by dllthomas »

drewcoo wrote: post #82
alganet wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. The original reaction for that pathology is "The Mythical Man-Month", it's what started everything. From my point of view, we're still man-monthin'. The Agile folks just translated a personal reflection from Fred Brooks into a culture (then some companies made it into a cult). Anyway. In your opinion, what the pathologies for _this_ time would be?

> The original reaction for that pathology is "The Mythical Man-Month", it's what started everything. In software, Gerald Weinberg was writing about how to organize and optimize this stuff at least a decade before Brooks. And Edwards Deming's work led to a lot of agile ideas. That strain of thinking is traceable at least back to the Napoleonic-era's Prussian artillery. The mythical man month isn't really a software p…

I very much agree that Brooks didn't "start everything" but I think he brought value to the discussion of those human organization problems in the context of software. Weinberg got there earlier but I feel like I personally got more of value from Brooks. Obviously YMMV.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#96

Post by psunavy03 »

28304283409234 wrote: post #86
psunavy03 wrote: post #20

Dumb shits misapplying Agile because "we do standups" are dead. The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff in such a way that they can validate their assumptions and get customer feedback as soon as possible. Not how well you "do Scrum," "increase your velocity," or any of that trash. But actually applying these concepts breaks some managers' brains, and then we get the…

But, after 25 years of IT and 15 years of agile, I have yet to meet the product owner that knows what "the right stuff" is. Defining the problem is the hardest part. After that, asking the team what they think they can do to create a solution for the problem: that is the easy part.

The entire point of Agile is that you accept that you DON'T KNOW what "the right stuff" is at first, and so you get stuff in front of the customer as soon as feasible and then use that feedback as quickly as possible, over and over again until the cost of going further isn't worth it anymore.

The entire point is moving away from big design up front. Instead, you create hypotheses and then test them against reality. You're not expected to know the entire path, but you ARE supposed to know what vector to take until the next feedback.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#97

Post by [deleted] »

psunavy03 wrote: post #93
bumby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff This is my sticking point. The whole idea of process-focus is that you can rarely count on having "the right people working on the right stuff." Sometimes the "right person" today isn't the right person tomorrow because they're dealing with an illness or emotional event at home or something else that throws them off their gam…

The whole point of Agile is to organically grow what processes make sense in that particular context, not "process control" for its own sake. Even Scrum was designed to be deliberately incomplete so organizations can do what makes sense for them, not just blindly follow a checklist. And it's not about someone not being "the right person" because they're human. It's about having the right skillsets on the team working…

[deleted]

Re: Agile Is Dead

#98

Post by bumby »

psunavy03 wrote: post #93
bumby wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff This is my sticking point. The whole idea of process-focus is that you can rarely count on having "the right people working on the right stuff." Sometimes the "right person" today isn't the right person tomorrow because they're dealing with an illness or emotional event at home or something else that throws them off their gam…

The whole point of Agile is to organically grow what processes make sense in that particular context, not "process control" for its own sake. Even Scrum was designed to be deliberately incomplete so organizations can do what makes sense for them, not just blindly follow a checklist. And it's not about someone not being "the right person" because they're human. It's about having the right skillsets on the team working…

It really seems like both sides talk past each other. If you talk to agile advocate about how to implement it in something safety critical that requires good documentation, they’re quick to point out agile isn’t anti-documentation, it’s anti-wasteful-documentation. A good process focus is also always trying to reduce waste. Likewise, a process focused advocate would say the focus needs to be on what the customer requires: working software.

The issue seems to be both sides provide cover for incompetence. Agile folks can eschew tools that help identify and mitigate risks because it’s ignorance masquerading as efficiency. Process folks can focus too much on the process itself when they don’t understand how to track what’s really important.

Re: Agile Is Dead

#99

Post by jrs235 »

28304283409234 wrote: post #86
psunavy03 wrote: post #20

Dumb shits misapplying Agile because "we do standups" are dead. The entire point is and always has been to get the right people working on the right stuff in such a way that they can validate their assumptions and get customer feedback as soon as possible. Not how well you "do Scrum," "increase your velocity," or any of that trash. But actually applying these concepts breaks some managers' brains, and then we get the…

But, after 25 years of IT and 15 years of agile, I have yet to meet the product owner that knows what "the right stuff" is. Defining the problem is the hardest part. After that, asking the team what they think they can do to create a solution for the problem: that is the easy part.

>I have yet to meet the product owner that knows what "the right stuff" is.

>Defining the problem is the hardest part.

I have yet to meet a product owner that collects customer requests (or determines customer pain points) and assigns a value to implementing/alleviating them, also known as determining the payoff function.

Determining the most valuable problem to solve is the hardest part.

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