5 ms·

What you won't do however, is work insane hours to get something done because management changed scope or requirements at the last second but kept the deadline.

by lovich 9y ago

What you won't do however, is work insane hours to get something done because management changed scope or requirements at the last second but kept the deadline. The flavor of agile development that most shops seem to devolve to is one where management gets the part that they can update requirements based on new information, but deadlines are the same and costs need to constantly be cut. My personal belief is that our industry tends towards less experienced workers because they put up with shit managers more and can be used to cover for their issues. It's anecodtal only, but I have never heard management decide that their deadlines we're improbable if not impossible when bugs get through. It's always just explained away with platitudes about code quality that suddenly dont matter when that requires more money or more time

doktrin 9y ago
As an overworking tryhard chronic cover-upper, this hits dishearteningly close to home.
emodendroket 9y ago
Call me cynical, but I am always surprised when people sincerely appeal to "agile/scrum values" of team autonomy or whatever to contest management diktats because, like... isn't it totally predictable that that part will be ignored whenever it is inconvenient?
- dreamfactored 9y ago
  Agile is like dieting, simple but hard and requiring a lot of discipline. Very very few companies are any good at it but done well, it's a complete transformation.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I think it's more like a cult, where it's supposed to solve all your problems and any problem you identify with it just proves you aren't doing it right.
    - lovich 9y ago
      It is, at best, a different set of trade offs. What it has become is like you said, some sort of cult where management gets everything they want and don't have to pay any costs. I've worked at two places where my tech lead at least recognized that if scope or requirements changed then deadlines changed. Now I am at a place where agile is just a word thrown at any problem and now we have things like being asked to integrate third party tools that we don't receive until a week before the deadline. My team stayed till 2 am and was back in at 9am the next day and _literally no one_ saw a problem because it's "agile" and that's what you do when your agile
    - dreamfactored 9y ago
      I've been lucky enough to be on projects where it's done well (not scrum) and would never go back after working that way.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        I've experienced "no methodology; just people kind of describing what they want and you make it up as you go along" and Scrum and I prefer the former, but I suppose it's possible that someone out there is doing Agile in a way that is better than the one I learned in a bunch of excruciatingly boring training sessions from consultants. e: Actually I did Kanban too and that was OK, but that is a lot closer to the "no methodology" thing and anyway doesn't involve you making decisions like "oh, can't start working on that, because the sprint is almost over."
        lmm 9y ago
        Kanban is very much Agile. Scrum can be implemented in a variously heavy to lightweight way, though FWIW I found having leftover time at the end of a sprint that could only be used for non-business-facing work (e.g. improving the build system, refactoring of code that wasn't immediately being worked on) to be very valuable.
        emodendroket 9y ago
- notyourday 9y ago
  Agile is cargo cult. Customers are not agile to your fuckups. Competitors are not agile to your "scope creep". You know what is the current most agile company in software? Microsoft. You know why? Because no matter how much it fucked up its business is so huge and so vast that it did not matter. It makes money. But even Microsoft is starting to feel the need to deliver as otherwise it is going to become IBM or Xerox.
TomK32 9y ago
Not many 20-something have the mental strength to insist on the dealine moving if such big change requests come in late. As a contractor you'd insist on the client to pay that extra work and time.

by lovich 9y ago

doktrin 9y ago

As an overworking tryhard chronic cover-upper, this hits dishearteningly close to home.

emodendroket 9y ago

Call me cynical, but I am always surprised when people sincerely appeal to "agile/scrum values" of team autonomy or whatever to contest management diktats because, like... isn't it totally predictable that that part will be ignored whenever it is inconvenient?

dreamfactored 9y ago
Agile is like dieting, simple but hard and requiring a lot of discipline. Very very few companies are any good at it but done well, it's a complete transformation.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I think it's more like a cult, where it's supposed to solve all your problems and any problem you identify with it just proves you aren't doing it right.
  - lovich 9y ago
    It is, at best, a different set of trade offs. What it has become is like you said, some sort of cult where management gets everything they want and don't have to pay any costs. I've worked at two places where my tech lead at least recognized that if scope or requirements changed then deadlines changed. Now I am at a place where agile is just a word thrown at any problem and now we have things like being asked to integrate third party tools that we don't receive until a week before the deadline. My team stayed till 2 am and was back in at 9am the next day and _literally no one_ saw a problem because it's "agile" and that's what you do when your agile
  - dreamfactored 9y ago
    I've been lucky enough to be on projects where it's done well (not scrum) and would never go back after working that way.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I've experienced "no methodology; just people kind of describing what they want and you make it up as you go along" and Scrum and I prefer the former, but I suppose it's possible that someone out there is doing Agile in a way that is better than the one I learned in a bunch of excruciatingly boring training sessions from consultants. e: Actually I did Kanban too and that was OK, but that is a lot closer to the "no methodology" thing and anyway doesn't involve you making decisions like "oh, can't start working on that, because the sprint is almost over."
      - lmm 9y ago
        Kanban is very much Agile. Scrum can be implemented in a variously heavy to lightweight way, though FWIW I found having leftover time at the end of a sprint that could only be used for non-business-facing work (e.g. improving the build system, refactoring of code that wasn't immediately being worked on) to be very valuable.
        emodendroket 9y ago
notyourday 9y ago
Agile is cargo cult. Customers are not agile to your fuckups. Competitors are not agile to your "scope creep". You know what is the current most agile company in software? Microsoft. You know why? Because no matter how much it fucked up its business is so huge and so vast that it did not matter. It makes money. But even Microsoft is starting to feel the need to deliver as otherwise it is going to become IBM or Xerox.

TomK32 9y ago

Not many 20-something have the mental strength to insist on the dealine moving if such big change requests come in late. As a contractor you'd insist on the client to pay that extra work and time.