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In my experience Agile is most prevalent where the engineering culture is the weakest. When engineering culture is strong and effective, it's unnecessary. Where
by 1_2__4 9y ago
In my experience Agile is most prevalent where the engineering culture is the weakest. When engineering culture is strong and effective, it's unnecessary. Where engineering is simply the business side's bitch is when you end up with a massive multi-tentacled PMO organization attempting to use their Agile hammer on anything vaguely nail-looking, cheered on by Chief Revenue Officers and Heads of Product who love that they have a direct line to individual engineering teams... Without any of that pesky engineering leadership getting in the way.
- maxxxxx 9y agoCorrect. That's one of the reasons why I am looking to leave my current job. Ultimately management has no appreciation or understanding of software development so most projects have more managers asking "insightful" questions or asking for status than people doing the work.
- 1_2__4 9y agoYou're not alone.
- lowbloodsugar 9y agoI've used Scrum in startups with strong engineering culture, and it helps align engineering and "the business" (sales, marketing, 'what are we building', 'for who'). As an engineer, Scrum helped me expose 'the realities' of software engineering to people who did't get it. For example, the communication helped us change priorities to get value into the product. Unfortunately, "Agile" is now mainstream bullshit, and, as you say, its now used by the business to just bypass any kind of engineering mastery, and just hire a bunch of junior devs and tell them what to do. "Scrum masters" are just "yes men". Most times, when a company says "We do Agile" they mean "We hired a bunch of script kiddies on a constant death march". Scrum is about empowering developers, but Scrum itself does not empower them. If the developers are already empowered, then I believe it's useful for communication and direction. If the developers are not already empowered, then Scrum is actively bad. Scrum cannot empower developers. Scrum with disempowered developers is just disempowered developers but now without any kind of SDLC safety net.
- lasereyes136 9y agoI agree with your statements. But it has nothing to do with Agile or Scrum. It all has to do with company culture. It reminds me of my favorite Henrik Kniberg quote "If your company doesn't like the truth, than maybe Agile isn't for you". Very few companies realize value from script kiddies on a constant death march (great quote BTW) and that prevents no one from trying.
- vivaamerica1 9y agoAgreed. In the current form, Agile is management's answer to "I have no idea what we're doing but I need to be seen doing something". At my workplace they even invented a thing called "Agile Transformation Journey" and hired a bunch of scrum masters who call themselves "Agilists", because the whole org is falling apart on technical debt and clueless managers standing around pointing fingers. A few years into this "journey" and everything is exactly the same. Everyone knows this. The devs know this, the agilists know this, the managers know this but we all pretend to get along because it's an echo chamber. It's almost too fun too watch. You-Can't-Fix-A-Broken-Culture-With-Agile.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> You-Can't-Fix-A-Broken-Culture-With-Agile. Agile is just a set of cultural values. If you can't fix a broken culture with it, what is it good for?
- vivaamerica1 9y agoYou don't fix a broken culture by throwing more "culture values" on it. You fix it from within. What is it good for? In the current form - nothing. Sounds good, doesn't work.
- chimprich 9y agoI hear a lot of complaining on HN about Agile development but few proposals for something better. In my experience I have found that Agile is the least-worst development process, broadly speaking. I find it difficult to imagine a productive development environment that does not have at least a significant number of aspects of modern Agile thinking. Could you give some examples of Agile development practices you would replace, and with what?