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> It seems like we've regressed in terms of quality and the > general principle of doing it right the first time. This is what Agile ideologues have brought

> It seems like we've regressed in terms of quality and the > general principle of doing it right the first time. This is what Agile ideologues have brought us. "Valuing working software over documentation" does not, in my experience, tend to result in workable development, and that just doesn't lead to working software.

xlayn 11y ago
There is no way of guaranteeing doing it right the first time. Most of the methodologies of software development take the iterative process as a measure of caution, prevention or risk avoidance similar processes. In fact CMMi mentions the importance of measure, iterate and fix as soon as you can... which is the response to the premise of being unable to "just do-it it right"
- eponeponepon 11y ago
  > There is no way of guaranteeing doing it right > the first time. This is especially true if (and I'm not saying this is a correct implementation of Agile principles) one actively avoids defining what constitutes doing it right up front as an article of faith.
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  I don't think I get where your post is going. When I hear some combination of "getting it right" and "first time" I don't presume that the development team only gets one crack at something. Instead, it just sounds like iterating internally on something until it's ready without cutting corners.
  - xlayn 11y ago
    It goes to show that the poster idea >Agile ideologues -> just doesn't lead to working software it's a flawed idea; if you want to take agile core values all of them are focused on actually trying to reduce errors and improve quality [0]. On the other hand it's a very broad generalization, and leaves the open question "what does actually lead to working software?" [0] http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
    - eponeponepon 11y ago
      On a small point of order, I'm slightly worried that you might have read "idealogues" as a typo for "ideologies" - very much not the case! I very much meant idealogues. I don't take much issue with the underlying ideas of the Agile manifesto - it's the ritualisation and thoughtlessness that it can lead to that irks me. The "anti Agile manifesto", many though its faults are, rings true in a lot of places, to my mind: "backlogs are really just to do lists" seems pretty much inarguable, for one.
jacques_chester 11y ago
My experience of "agile" was that every hack-and-fix shop in the universe heard a telephone-game version of "stop doing boring stuff you never liked anyway" and stapled a carboard sign saying "WE ARE AGILE!" above the doorway. Meanwhile, nothing changes. The only successful agile method I've personally seen work is XP, and it requires enormous and near-universal discipline. In that respect it is no different from pre-Agile methods that worked. Agile isn't about jettisoning good software practices. It's about making them smaller. And the signers of the Agile Manifesto weren't the first to think of it. All the ideas were in the literature, in the open, for decades before they coalesced. Even the concept of taking necessary activities and shrinking them is old -- Watts Humphreys beat everyone to it with the Personal Software Process, which is the CMMI shrunk down to the scale of a single engineer. Disclaimer: I work for one of the most notoriously pro-agile shops of all -- Pivotal Labs. Before I came here I was skeptical. Now I'm notoriously pro-agile, with a generous dash of No True Agile Methodology.

xlayn 11y ago

There is no way of guaranteeing doing it right the first time. Most of the methodologies of software development take the iterative process as a measure of caution, prevention or risk avoidance similar processes. In fact CMMi mentions the importance of measure, iterate and fix as soon as you can... which is the response to the premise of being unable to "just do-it it right"

eponeponepon 11y ago
> There is no way of guaranteeing doing it right > the first time. This is especially true if (and I'm not saying this is a correct implementation of Agile principles) one actively avoids defining what constitutes doing it right up front as an article of faith.
forgottenpass 11y ago
I don't think I get where your post is going. When I hear some combination of "getting it right" and "first time" I don't presume that the development team only gets one crack at something. Instead, it just sounds like iterating internally on something until it's ready without cutting corners.
- xlayn 11y ago
  It goes to show that the poster idea >Agile ideologues -> just doesn't lead to working software it's a flawed idea; if you want to take agile core values all of them are focused on actually trying to reduce errors and improve quality [0]. On the other hand it's a very broad generalization, and leaves the open question "what does actually lead to working software?" [0] http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ http://www.agilemanifesto.org/
  - eponeponepon 11y ago
    On a small point of order, I'm slightly worried that you might have read "idealogues" as a typo for "ideologies" - very much not the case! I very much meant idealogues. I don't take much issue with the underlying ideas of the Agile manifesto - it's the ritualisation and thoughtlessness that it can lead to that irks me. The "anti Agile manifesto", many though its faults are, rings true in a lot of places, to my mind: "backlogs are really just to do lists" seems pretty much inarguable, for one.

jacques_chester 11y ago

My experience of "agile" was that every hack-and-fix shop in the universe heard a telephone-game version of "stop doing boring stuff you never liked anyway" and stapled a carboard sign saying "WE ARE AGILE!" above the doorway. Meanwhile, nothing changes. The only successful agile method I've personally seen work is XP, and it requires enormous and near-universal discipline. In that respect it is no different from pre-Agile methods that worked. Agile isn't about jettisoning good software practices. It's about making them smaller. And the signers of the Agile Manifesto weren't the first to think of it. All the ideas were in the literature, in the open, for decades before they coalesced. Even the concept of taking necessary activities and shrinking them is old -- Watts Humphreys beat everyone to it with the Personal Software Process, which is the CMMI shrunk down to the scale of a single engineer. Disclaimer: I work for one of the most notoriously pro-agile shops of all -- Pivotal Labs. Before I came here I was skeptical. Now I'm notoriously pro-agile, with a generous dash of No True Agile Methodology.