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> Having small-scale tickets that you actually finish is the very essence of agile Bollocks. The "highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early an

by geocar 8y ago

> Having small-scale tickets that you actually finish is the very essence of agile Bollocks. The "highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." Not tickets, small or otherwise. Not tasks. It has nothing to do with two-weeks. > Ignoring the "wider vision" is the best way to produce software that actually solves people's problems I have no idea what you could possibly mean by this. Every time I've ever seen a modular development that isolates developers from the business (or from each other), I've seen brittle software, and that's assuming they get done at all. > But a lightweight board that you push tickets through - the famous "kanban" - is a great way to develop software (I've had a lot of success with Trello, though I fear it's only a matter of time before Atlassian bloats it into JIRAness). Listen, if software helps you, then great, but if your whole life is "pushing tickets", you're not doing Agile. It doesn't matter if you're using Jira or Jello. https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Klinky 8y ago
The problem with Agile is that no one is doing True Agile™, because no one can agree on what True Agile™ is.
- tootie 8y ago
  JIRA and Scrum are great ways to facilitate agile development but it's not bidirectional. I usually push rigid Scrum on teams if I think they lack discipline or experience. Follow the textbook until you understand why. When I'm working with smart veteran devs who know exactly why and how agile works, we can afford to be more freewheeling. I think agile is fundamentally simple. The essence is the continual improvement. How that translates into a working process (like when do I write tests and who updated the docs) are going to vary project to project.
- dvtrn 8y ago
  Dave Thomas himself declared Agile dead a few years ago, but offers up what I think is a better definition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M
- rightbyte 8y ago
  Well, that's because there are so many false prophets. I like Jira. It's terrible, of course, but way better than using nothing. Tech Crunch is mainly criticizing how "Agile" development is commonly used, to micromanage and give a false sense of grasp of the scope of a project for management. Micromanagement without the responsibilities coming with micromanagement (providing nice specifications, doing follow ups, taking responsibility for failures, etc) make me miss the waterfall model ...
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Do not try to do True Agile, only try to realize the truth. There is no True Agile. To me, Agile is really a set of principles to help you decide what to focus on (e.g people over processes). The different methodologies (scrum, kanban, etc) are just frameworks to help you build the best dev process for your team while trying to keep the agile principles front and center. In reality, all kinds of factors get in the way of True Agile - experience of devs, team dynamics, company incentive structure, management expectations, management’s management expectations, how the company handles failure and the subsequent ownership vs finger pointing, etc. The actual implementation of Agile should be different for each organization because the environment in which they operate in is different. With that said, there are certain core principles and practices that are very beneficial across the board and consistency across teams within an organization certainly helps.
- rahoulb 8y ago
  True Agile says “people over processes” meaning it’s different for everyone.
lmm 8y ago
> Not tickets, small or otherwise. Not tasks. It has nothing to do with two-weeks. Just what do you think "early and continuous delivery of valuable software" looks like in practice then? > Every time I've ever seen a modular development that isolates developers from the business (or from each other), I've seen brittle software Completely agreed. I've found any "vision of the project as a whole" is exactly where that isolation tends to happen: once this "skeleton of the city" is laid out, business input gets cut out because The Plan has already been agreed. > Listen, if software helps you, then great, but if your whole life is "pushing tickets", you're not doing Agile. It doesn't matter if you're using Jira or Jello. Nonsense. Again, how better to achieve "early and continuous delivery of valuable software"?
- geocar 8y ago
  > how better to achieve "early and continuous delivery of valuable software"? By building an application and putting it in the hands of the business as often as possible. Thirty years ago I used a whiteboard. I never needed ticketing software to build software or to ship software. The only time I ever used ticketing software (from the contributor side of the fence) is when the business I was working for wanted it, and the only thing they ever did with it was track my time. Good for them. Now when I'm on the management-side of the fence, I still don't really like ticketing software. I use Jira because the rest of their business uses Jira, and they want accurate reporting for R&D tax credits and doing KPI-based bonus remittal, and they've built reports and scripts on top of Jira. Some of my developers like to use the tickets themselves, and some prefer to let my assistant do the ticket busywork.
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    My takeaway from this comment: you have an assistant?!!
    - lugg 8y ago
      Someone needs to create a virtual assistant startup that focuses on the JIRA management niche. I'd buy the developer package.
arminiusreturns 8y ago
I love how much this comment is a perfect example of developers thinking about nothing but software development. As a sysadmin, I've custom written ticketing software, and used just about all of them, and the thing is Jira really fullfils a role in companies that most of the other ones don't, and I'm not even talking about software development! It's far from perfect, that's for sure, which is why I use jira from emacs. So many people here seem to think every business is a SV software startup and not just some regular old business trying to get shit done and it has repeatedly been a problem I've seen and I'm sure it's the cause many a miscommunication.
- reissbaker 8y ago
  While I've seen non-software teams use Jira before as well, I don't think it's unreasonable to talk about Jira as a tool designed for software development; from their homepage: "The #1 software development tool used by agile teams" and "The best software teams ship early and often." and "Development workflow: Jira Software automatically updates issues and transitions work when code is committed in Bitbucket." and "Continuous integration: Power your CI with Bamboo and monitor build statuses without ever leaving Jira Software." (That last sentence is nightmarish.)
- geocar 8y ago
  Well yes. I do develop software, but I've always thought of myself as a sysadmin who programs (AS21863 for over a decade) instead of a developer who "ops". These days I'm also an executive (of an LSE listed company). I do these jobs differently, even if I use (some of) the same tools for each. I think a lot of people believe that it's their tools that make them able and forget it's their brains that use and make the tools. I also think that anyone who thinks using a particular tool is essential (as opposed to meritorious) needs to get their head examined. Do you have any details about your emacs/jira workflow?

by geocar 8y ago

Klinky 8y ago

The problem with Agile is that no one is doing True Agile™, because no one can agree on what True Agile™ is.

tootie 8y ago
JIRA and Scrum are great ways to facilitate agile development but it's not bidirectional. I usually push rigid Scrum on teams if I think they lack discipline or experience. Follow the textbook until you understand why. When I'm working with smart veteran devs who know exactly why and how agile works, we can afford to be more freewheeling. I think agile is fundamentally simple. The essence is the continual improvement. How that translates into a working process (like when do I write tests and who updated the docs) are going to vary project to project.
dvtrn 8y ago
Dave Thomas himself declared Agile dead a few years ago, but offers up what I think is a better definition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M
rightbyte 8y ago
Well, that's because there are so many false prophets. I like Jira. It's terrible, of course, but way better than using nothing. Tech Crunch is mainly criticizing how "Agile" development is commonly used, to micromanage and give a false sense of grasp of the scope of a project for management. Micromanagement without the responsibilities coming with micromanagement (providing nice specifications, doing follow ups, taking responsibility for failures, etc) make me miss the waterfall model ...
joejerryronnie 8y ago
Do not try to do True Agile, only try to realize the truth. There is no True Agile. To me, Agile is really a set of principles to help you decide what to focus on (e.g people over processes). The different methodologies (scrum, kanban, etc) are just frameworks to help you build the best dev process for your team while trying to keep the agile principles front and center. In reality, all kinds of factors get in the way of True Agile - experience of devs, team dynamics, company incentive structure, management expectations, management’s management expectations, how the company handles failure and the subsequent ownership vs finger pointing, etc. The actual implementation of Agile should be different for each organization because the environment in which they operate in is different. With that said, there are certain core principles and practices that are very beneficial across the board and consistency across teams within an organization certainly helps.
rahoulb 8y ago
True Agile says “people over processes” meaning it’s different for everyone.

lmm 8y ago

> Not tickets, small or otherwise. Not tasks. It has nothing to do with two-weeks. Just what do you think "early and continuous delivery of valuable software" looks like in practice then? > Every time I've ever seen a modular development that isolates developers from the business (or from each other), I've seen brittle software Completely agreed. I've found any "vision of the project as a whole" is exactly where that isolation tends to happen: once this "skeleton of the city" is laid out, business input gets cut out because The Plan has already been agreed. > Listen, if software helps you, then great, but if your whole life is "pushing tickets", you're not doing Agile. It doesn't matter if you're using Jira or Jello. Nonsense. Again, how better to achieve "early and continuous delivery of valuable software"?

geocar 8y ago
> how better to achieve "early and continuous delivery of valuable software"? By building an application and putting it in the hands of the business as often as possible. Thirty years ago I used a whiteboard. I never needed ticketing software to build software or to ship software. The only time I ever used ticketing software (from the contributor side of the fence) is when the business I was working for wanted it, and the only thing they ever did with it was track my time. Good for them. Now when I'm on the management-side of the fence, I still don't really like ticketing software. I use Jira because the rest of their business uses Jira, and they want accurate reporting for R&D tax credits and doing KPI-based bonus remittal, and they've built reports and scripts on top of Jira. Some of my developers like to use the tickets themselves, and some prefer to let my assistant do the ticket busywork.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  My takeaway from this comment: you have an assistant?!!
  - lugg 8y ago
    Someone needs to create a virtual assistant startup that focuses on the JIRA management niche. I'd buy the developer package.

arminiusreturns 8y ago

I love how much this comment is a perfect example of developers thinking about nothing but software development. As a sysadmin, I've custom written ticketing software, and used just about all of them, and the thing is Jira really fullfils a role in companies that most of the other ones don't, and I'm not even talking about software development! It's far from perfect, that's for sure, which is why I use jira from emacs. So many people here seem to think every business is a SV software startup and not just some regular old business trying to get shit done and it has repeatedly been a problem I've seen and I'm sure it's the cause many a miscommunication.

reissbaker 8y ago
While I've seen non-software teams use Jira before as well, I don't think it's unreasonable to talk about Jira as a tool designed for software development; from their homepage: "The #1 software development tool used by agile teams" and "The best software teams ship early and often." and "Development workflow: Jira Software automatically updates issues and transitions work when code is committed in Bitbucket." and "Continuous integration: Power your CI with Bamboo and monitor build statuses without ever leaving Jira Software." (That last sentence is nightmarish.)
geocar 8y ago
Well yes. I do develop software, but I've always thought of myself as a sysadmin who programs (AS21863 for over a decade) instead of a developer who "ops". These days I'm also an executive (of an LSE listed company). I do these jobs differently, even if I use (some of) the same tools for each. I think a lot of people believe that it's their tools that make them able and forget it's their brains that use and make the tools. I also think that anyone who thinks using a particular tool is essential (as opposed to meritorious) needs to get their head examined. Do you have any details about your emacs/jira workflow?