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Ask HN: Do you follow a software development methodology?

• PaulHoule 9y ago
  For projects or programs I like to design a methodology which is appropriate for the context. For instance, off-the-shelf "agile" methodologies that would be great for a Ruby on Rails webapp can fail if you apply them to a project which is heavy on 'data science' because the 2 week sprint (10 working days) involves a 2 day batch job. Start the 2 day job on the last day and you are screwed, start it on the second to last day and you take a big risk that something could go wrong, start it early enough and you will nail it every time. Thus the model of "managing punchclock time" needs to be supplemented with "managing calendar time" methods. To take another example, if you were developing a video game you are going to have people creating image, sound, video, 3-d, levels and other assets and you need the right methods and tools to deal with that. As for people who "hate agile" I have two things to say: (1) if you cannot plan two weeks of work you cannot plan six months of work, and (2) agile does force people to work through interpersonal conflicts that can often be avoided in other cases. If you are lucky you can avoid them until "ship day", if you are not lucky you get angry meetings, finger-pointing and another year of "death march" to finish up what you thought was a six month project.