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>they have identified Agile for what it is: a snake oil methodology that's completely unproven Is this a common line of thought? I recently started working for

>they have identified Agile for what it is: a snake oil methodology that's completely unproven Is this a common line of thought? I recently started working for a company that follows Agile and I thought it was generally accepted as the "next step" so to speak in software development. I didn't know that there was any resentment for it. Care to elaborate? Do others feel this way as well?

scarmig 11y ago
Agile would be good if it existed as described and was a stable organizational mode. In reality, every "Agile" place I've worked for really uses Agile-for-name-value-only, which amounts to daily half-hour long status reports on what you did yesterday and project deadlines that come from on high that have to be ratified pro forma by the engineering team. Yes, I know that's not true Agile. Just like the USSR wasn't true socialism! Agile can never fail, it can only be failed.
- BurningFrog 11y ago
  Do you also reject democracy because all brutal dictatorships call themselves The Democratic Republic of X?
  - scarmig 11y ago
    Yes.
techterrier 11y ago
It's certainly preferable to team of analysts spending 6 months writing specs, then engineers spending 12 months writing code, then 2 years spent testing and fixing things only to find out that while that's all been happening the internets been invented and the original product has no purpose.
- ssmoot 11y ago
  Anecdotal, but I've never been witness to a project where requirements changed so drastically it led to failure. I've seen MANY "Agile" projects where effectively no analysis was done however. Which then reliably leads to failure. EDIT: To add: If the success metric you're using is: From the client's perspective, do they get what they asked for, when they were promised, for the price they agreed to? Then I've seen a majority of "Waterfall" like projects succeed. And the ones that don't typically "fail fast" in the analysis phase. I've never seen an Agile project meet that bar. By the time they're canned they're usually already way over budget and while a team might imagine they've "delivered value" the projects are (IME) canned specifically because it became evident they would most likely be handed over to another vendor and the delivered version scrapped entirely at some point. I also find it frustratingly comical that projects are routinely compared to assembly line work (Toyota assembly line philosophies) when they have a lot more in common with the design and development phases of car production. Agile in the small perhaps, but overall an incredibly structured process with a lot of planning and analysis. Unless you want a car launch 3 years late that costs 50% more than you promised. Nobody wants an "Agile" car (unless you've already set aside your deposit for a Tesla Model 3 I suppose ;-) ). If I were a client, there's no way I'd ever give a anything bigger than a low six figure project to an Agile shop. For a process intended to lower risk, I've only seen it do the opposite.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  i've seen exactly 0 of this type of projects you describe in corporate multinational environemnt (or any other for that matter). in any non-agile corp i've been, projects are usually a mix, where analysis doesn't finish when dev starts, testing is ongoing with dev, just shifted a bit. and when these projects go fubar, it's usually caused my forces far away from delivery team. rarely, it's really fault of team not delivering, but agian, situation is so complex and uncontrollable, that putting everything and everybody (including all stakeholders) into agile wouldn't probably make a big difference in go/nogo call. agile approach brings quite a few aspects that developers like and they just feel right (or at least better), but frankly, it's overhyped. just another tool/approach to certain set of situations, in certain conditions
  - 11y ago
Glide 11y ago
It's important to remember the historical context for Agile. Agile grew up and started where there was Waterfall. From that viewpoint of Agile != Waterfall, it is a step forward. There will always be resentment towards agile. There are too many botched attempts at making a methodology work from well-meaning but inept individuals that have effected lives and workplaces. What's insane is the marketing around Agile and more specifically Scrum.
- zenogais 11y ago
  This is just not historically accurate at all. There was a wide variety of methodologies before agile came along - Spiral, Cleanroom, OOP, TSP, RAD, RUP, et al. These are not all waterfall - waterfall was never really a prescribed method of development, see [1]. Many of these methodologies have proven track records and some even have fairly strong empirical support. The resentment isn't resentment - it's people who have actually used something other than Agile listening to this made-up history and the catastrophizing of up-front planning, and seeing it for the nonsense it is. Agile isn't right for many or even most organizations, and it's failure doesn't seem like the problem of a good idea bungled in the wrong hands. Just very inexperienced people suckered in by good marketing into picking an inferior tool. All that being said there are many good things about agile. It's helped bring a human focus into the industry, and introduced some decent ideas. For a fairly balanced look I'd see [2]. [1]: https://leanpub.com/leprechauns https://leanpub.com/leprechauns [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-The-Good-Hype-Ugly/dp/3319051547 http://www.amazon.com/Agile-The-Good-Hype-Ugly/dp/3319051547
m0nty 11y ago
Where I work it seems to be a bit of a cargo cult, rather than an ethos of actively solving problems. We do standup meetings because sit-down ones wouldn't work. We use post-it notes on whiteboards because just writing on the whiteboard wouldn't work. We have sprints because just doing the job wouldn't work. All the trappings of agile, none of the results. I'm not hostile to agile per se - it clearly does work. But not where I am, it's just another fad which will eventually be replaced by some other magic methodology.

scarmig 11y ago

Agile would be good if it existed as described and was a stable organizational mode. In reality, every "Agile" place I've worked for really uses Agile-for-name-value-only, which amounts to daily half-hour long status reports on what you did yesterday and project deadlines that come from on high that have to be ratified pro forma by the engineering team. Yes, I know that's not true Agile. Just like the USSR wasn't true socialism! Agile can never fail, it can only be failed.

BurningFrog 11y ago
Do you also reject democracy because all brutal dictatorships call themselves The Democratic Republic of X?
- scarmig 11y ago
  Yes.

techterrier 11y ago

It's certainly preferable to team of analysts spending 6 months writing specs, then engineers spending 12 months writing code, then 2 years spent testing and fixing things only to find out that while that's all been happening the internets been invented and the original product has no purpose.

ssmoot 11y ago
Anecdotal, but I've never been witness to a project where requirements changed so drastically it led to failure. I've seen MANY "Agile" projects where effectively no analysis was done however. Which then reliably leads to failure. EDIT: To add: If the success metric you're using is: From the client's perspective, do they get what they asked for, when they were promised, for the price they agreed to? Then I've seen a majority of "Waterfall" like projects succeed. And the ones that don't typically "fail fast" in the analysis phase. I've never seen an Agile project meet that bar. By the time they're canned they're usually already way over budget and while a team might imagine they've "delivered value" the projects are (IME) canned specifically because it became evident they would most likely be handed over to another vendor and the delivered version scrapped entirely at some point. I also find it frustratingly comical that projects are routinely compared to assembly line work (Toyota assembly line philosophies) when they have a lot more in common with the design and development phases of car production. Agile in the small perhaps, but overall an incredibly structured process with a lot of planning and analysis. Unless you want a car launch 3 years late that costs 50% more than you promised. Nobody wants an "Agile" car (unless you've already set aside your deposit for a Tesla Model 3 I suppose ;-) ). If I were a client, there's no way I'd ever give a anything bigger than a low six figure project to an Agile shop. For a process intended to lower risk, I've only seen it do the opposite.
saiya-jin 11y ago
i've seen exactly 0 of this type of projects you describe in corporate multinational environemnt (or any other for that matter). in any non-agile corp i've been, projects are usually a mix, where analysis doesn't finish when dev starts, testing is ongoing with dev, just shifted a bit. and when these projects go fubar, it's usually caused my forces far away from delivery team. rarely, it's really fault of team not delivering, but agian, situation is so complex and uncontrollable, that putting everything and everybody (including all stakeholders) into agile wouldn't probably make a big difference in go/nogo call. agile approach brings quite a few aspects that developers like and they just feel right (or at least better), but frankly, it's overhyped. just another tool/approach to certain set of situations, in certain conditions
- 11y ago

Glide 11y ago

It's important to remember the historical context for Agile. Agile grew up and started where there was Waterfall. From that viewpoint of Agile != Waterfall, it is a step forward. There will always be resentment towards agile. There are too many botched attempts at making a methodology work from well-meaning but inept individuals that have effected lives and workplaces. What's insane is the marketing around Agile and more specifically Scrum.

zenogais 11y ago
This is just not historically accurate at all. There was a wide variety of methodologies before agile came along - Spiral, Cleanroom, OOP, TSP, RAD, RUP, et al. These are not all waterfall - waterfall was never really a prescribed method of development, see [1]. Many of these methodologies have proven track records and some even have fairly strong empirical support. The resentment isn't resentment - it's people who have actually used something other than Agile listening to this made-up history and the catastrophizing of up-front planning, and seeing it for the nonsense it is. Agile isn't right for many or even most organizations, and it's failure doesn't seem like the problem of a good idea bungled in the wrong hands. Just very inexperienced people suckered in by good marketing into picking an inferior tool. All that being said there are many good things about agile. It's helped bring a human focus into the industry, and introduced some decent ideas. For a fairly balanced look I'd see [2]. [1]: https://leanpub.com/leprechauns https://leanpub.com/leprechauns [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-The-Good-Hype-Ugly/dp/3319051547 http://www.amazon.com/Agile-The-Good-Hype-Ugly/dp/3319051547

m0nty 11y ago

Where I work it seems to be a bit of a cargo cult, rather than an ethos of actively solving problems. We do standup meetings because sit-down ones wouldn't work. We use post-it notes on whiteboards because just writing on the whiteboard wouldn't work. We have sprints because just doing the job wouldn't work. All the trappings of agile, none of the results. I'm not hostile to agile per se - it clearly does work. But not where I am, it's just another fad which will eventually be replaced by some other magic methodology.