3 ms·
Read The Mythical Man-Month, internalize it, and realize nothing ever changes. Organizations took up "Agile" because they wanted to be "agile." But Agile is no
by deckard1 9y ago
Read The Mythical Man-Month, internalize it, and realize nothing ever changes.
Organizations took up "Agile" because they wanted to be "agile." But Agile is not agile. Not even slightly. In most organizations, it devolves into Painful Waterfall. Or Yelling At My Boss Waterfall. Or Product Yelling At Boss Yelling At You Yelling At Each Other Waterfall. Not even joking here. Dead serious.
Corporations pick up Agile because they want to chase their hopes and dreams like the precious blossoming start-up they wish to be. It's a risk-averse way to dabble in the shark-invested start-up waters. In almost every start-up I've been in, I've had ssh access to production servers and modified production databases. When your business is facing life or death, all niceties go out the window. That unit test won't matter when your company goes under in a week. Big corporations don't see that, though. They just see the scrappy start-up eating their lunch.
- CoolGuySteve 9y agoI mean who wouldn't want to be "agile". What's the opposite of agile? Lethargic? It's double-plus good. Although now that I think about it, there's something to be said for lethargic development. Move lazily and fix things.
- matt_s 9y agoBrainstorming here about software projects you wouldn't want to be agile. Agile being where you are shipping to production in short cadences. - Healthcare system software - not IT but like software on those blood pressure monitor, drug dosing things hanging beside patients. You want to get those types of things right. - Software for anything in the military involving weapon systems. - Nuclear power plant control software. I honestly believe that 95% of software developers don't touch these types of things but I would think these are cases where a waterfall approach with heavy QA cycles is desired.