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I think Agile is a response to the reality that in many organizations writing code is a thankless and cynicism-inspiring burden. Agile tips the balance and put

I think Agile is a response to the reality that in many organizations writing code is a thankless and cynicism-inspiring burden. Agile tips the balance and puts the technical team in control of process and expectation management in a way that lets everybody feel very good about how much they got done, regardless of whether there is good code being written or successful product/market fit. It's also possible to justify quite a bit of architecture debt by deferring to agile principles and punting on systems thinking in favor of finishing a few n point stories, rinsing and repeating. I'd say that if you have a team that is cynical due to changing requirements and technically naive management (or clients/stakeholders) then agile might be a great approach. Or, if the sort of predictability and transparency offered by agile is of great value to the organization for some other reason. In general I think that sprint velocity is a vanity metric that has nothing to do with product market fit or system quality. The "retrospective" meeting is a nice idea, but the presence of a few complainers/gripers on the team can turn this into a morale-draining blamefest.

Domenic_S 9y ago
This is a weird comment. Assuming we're talking about a company of any real size, why is product/market fit the responsibility of engineering?
- jrs235 9y ago
  >regardless of whether there is good code being written or successful product/market fit. I don't think OP is suggesting that engineering is responsible for product/market fit but rather sprints and burndown charts provide some visibility and satisfaction that work is getting done (regardless of whether the code is clean and regardless of whether it is the work that ought to be getting worked on). I take the OP to be pointing out the reason that agile gets adopted and it's short comings that get overlooked because it makes people feel good. Clueless management is clueless. They often feel that nothing gets done without some visible artifact. Agile allows the dev/engineering team to help show the tasks and behind the scenes things that need to be done. Clueless management likes Agile for this visibility. But Agile doesn't necessarily ensure proper product/market fit, especially early on when the first sprints deal with architecture setup foundation code. Clueless management doesn't understand this (and it is managements job to ensure the dev team/engineering team is working on the correct solution).
  - Domenic_S 9y ago
    That sounds like an indictment of clueless management, not of Agile.
    - jrs235 9y ago
      Correct. And to that some would say that the latest agile craze and the large number of shops using agile is because of clueless management. It's not the miracle cure some people want it to be.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

Domenic_S 9y ago

This is a weird comment. Assuming we're talking about a company of any real size, why is product/market fit the responsibility of engineering?

jrs235 9y ago
>regardless of whether there is good code being written or successful product/market fit. I don't think OP is suggesting that engineering is responsible for product/market fit but rather sprints and burndown charts provide some visibility and satisfaction that work is getting done (regardless of whether the code is clean and regardless of whether it is the work that ought to be getting worked on). I take the OP to be pointing out the reason that agile gets adopted and it's short comings that get overlooked because it makes people feel good. Clueless management is clueless. They often feel that nothing gets done without some visible artifact. Agile allows the dev/engineering team to help show the tasks and behind the scenes things that need to be done. Clueless management likes Agile for this visibility. But Agile doesn't necessarily ensure proper product/market fit, especially early on when the first sprints deal with architecture setup foundation code. Clueless management doesn't understand this (and it is managements job to ensure the dev team/engineering team is working on the correct solution).
- Domenic_S 9y ago
  That sounds like an indictment of clueless management, not of Agile.
  - jrs235 9y ago
    Correct. And to that some would say that the latest agile craze and the large number of shops using agile is because of clueless management. It's not the miracle cure some people want it to be.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]