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The problem with Agile is that it's a thing that only works with adult (of any age) programmers that have enough experience to be let loose and prosper. If you
by dep_b 9y ago
The problem with Agile is that it's a thing that only works with adult (of any age) programmers that have enough experience to be let loose and prosper.
If you're going to pour Agile over chain gang junior sweatshops you're just doing cargo cult Agile. I think it's important that somebody starts thinking about what the best methodology for mediocre product managers for managing mediocre programmers is - and I say this without sarcasm.
A lot of developers need some kind of schedule, hand holding and so on to grow into better developers while delivering value. Instead of wondering for 1.5 hours "why is this called a stand up while everybody is sitting down?".
- tempodox 9y agoI was thinking the same thing about Extreme Programming in its day. Developers with the maturity, discipline and experience to employ the methodology don't really need it at all and those who need it don't have the capability to actually make it work. All that remains is cargo cult.
- alistairSH 9y agoIsn't this where agile frameworks like Scrum and Kanban come into the picture? They place some ground rules around "doing agile" for the immature teams to follow. As the team matures, they can drop or alter the rules as needed. And I don't disagree that some teams might never be capable of doing agile in a productive manner. But, I wouldn't aspire to work on one of those teams, or for that team's employer.
- MartinCron 9y agoI don’t think there’s any sauce you could pour over a chain gang of immature programmers to make them palatable. When building teams, I deliberately aim for a mix of developers of more and less experience, as that is a more realistic sustainable steady state than a half dozen superstars.
- kolinko 9y agoThere was a nice approach described in the Pragmatic Programmer book if I'm not mistaken. The idea was to construct development teams in a way similar to the surgery teams - one lead developer, one assistant developer (these two "adult" and very good), and a 3-4 other people who 's job is to make the life easier for the main devs - someone to manage documentation, someone else to do detailed testing, one average dev to do the simple and boring stuff, and so on. That way, in a company of a 100 devs, you'd need 15-30 super-smart developers (who don't need methodologies and scaffoldings), and the remaining 75 just junior/average specialists doing specific tasks and fitting into the structures provided by seniors.
- daveslash 9y agoChapter 3 of "The Mythical Man Month" is titled "The Surgical Team" and describes just this. If you enjoyed the Pragmatic Programmer, I recommend The Mythical Man Month as well.
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoCome up with a method that lets you reliably produce working software with only junior developers and you will probably become the world's first trillionaire. A process for creating good software with only mediocre developers is not a realistic expectation. You are always going to need some more experienced people for the juniors to learn from.