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In my experience, the problem is always in people, not tools. Nowadays, Agile/Scrum is a buzz word, every company is trying to get it, but rare people understa

by kovrik 8y ago

In my experience, the problem is always in people, not tools. Nowadays, Agile/Scrum is a buzz word, every company is trying to get it, but rare people understand it. They buy tools (like JIRA), they do standups, they assign story points...and then things become messy and it all turns into into a glorified waterfally kanban with story points. JIRA is just a tool (bloated, maybe), nothing wrong with it. Personally, I find it to be OK -- no major complaints about it.

lugg 8y ago
I did a planning meeting while working remotely. The only thing that came out of it was a big word document that looked like the big word docs id write for waterfall back in the day. I don't think people realise just how little things like JIRA and Trello do for you. The only thing they can give you is a different view of that same word document. The second they over clutter themselves with junk in the interface and custom flows the benefit to using them is lost. Trello is a good example, it used to be pretty decent. Now it takes something like 10 clicks to delete a card. The rest of their interface is chock full of antipatterns like that. Someone needs to build something that does one thing well and doesn't try to do every other thing under the sun.
wutbrodo 8y ago
I used to feel this way, but found it to be an unproductive model until I realized something: sure, most people are kinda stupid and sufficiently intelligent people can make many tools work for them. But most people's actions are driven _very_ heavily by their tools, and from a pragmatic perspective, criticizing tooling that drives bad actions for the average engineer makes a lot of sense. As an example: I recently ran a small engineering org (started out with just me, grew to about ten eng) working on a Python system. The founders had a lot of trouble sourcing, so we ended up with engineers that ranged from okay to mediocre to terrible. There's a ton of dangerous Python footguns that competent engineers have the discipline to avoid; engineering in Python at Google isn't exactly fun, but it's workable. OTOH, trying to run an engineering system in Python with the kind of engineers at this last company is a constant nightmare of catching and stopping idiotic abuses of Python's flexibility. Using something like Java would have imposed discipline on this engineers for a subset of the mistakes they were making. While it's true that sufficiently skilled engineers would've been aware of Python's pitfalls and worked around them, it's entirely fair to say that this permissiveness is a downside of engineering systems in Python. As another example, I feel exactly the same way about Facebook: for all the talk about how usage makes you depressed and scrolling through the newsfeed is bad for your mental health, I'm able to use it as a messaging, photo sharing, and event planning platform and can't remember the last time I looked at the news feed. That doesn't mean that it's unfair to criticize Facebook for the effect it has on those who can't resist doing so. To put it more concisely: while it's true that smart/competent people can think critically about the weaknesses of their tools and work around them, the need to do so is fairly described as a flaw in the tool.

by kovrik 8y ago

lugg 8y ago

I did a planning meeting while working remotely. The only thing that came out of it was a big word document that looked like the big word docs id write for waterfall back in the day. I don't think people realise just how little things like JIRA and Trello do for you. The only thing they can give you is a different view of that same word document. The second they over clutter themselves with junk in the interface and custom flows the benefit to using them is lost. Trello is a good example, it used to be pretty decent. Now it takes something like 10 clicks to delete a card. The rest of their interface is chock full of antipatterns like that. Someone needs to build something that does one thing well and doesn't try to do every other thing under the sun.

wutbrodo 8y ago

I used to feel this way, but found it to be an unproductive model until I realized something: sure, most people are kinda stupid and sufficiently intelligent people can make many tools work for them. But most people's actions are driven _very_ heavily by their tools, and from a pragmatic perspective, criticizing tooling that drives bad actions for the average engineer makes a lot of sense. As an example: I recently ran a small engineering org (started out with just me, grew to about ten eng) working on a Python system. The founders had a lot of trouble sourcing, so we ended up with engineers that ranged from okay to mediocre to terrible. There's a ton of dangerous Python footguns that competent engineers have the discipline to avoid; engineering in Python at Google isn't exactly fun, but it's workable. OTOH, trying to run an engineering system in Python with the kind of engineers at this last company is a constant nightmare of catching and stopping idiotic abuses of Python's flexibility. Using something like Java would have imposed discipline on this engineers for a subset of the mistakes they were making. While it's true that sufficiently skilled engineers would've been aware of Python's pitfalls and worked around them, it's entirely fair to say that this permissiveness is a downside of engineering systems in Python. As another example, I feel exactly the same way about Facebook: for all the talk about how usage makes you depressed and scrolling through the newsfeed is bad for your mental health, I'm able to use it as a messaging, photo sharing, and event planning platform and can't remember the last time I looked at the news feed. That doesn't mean that it's unfair to criticize Facebook for the effect it has on those who can't resist doing so. To put it more concisely: while it's true that smart/competent people can think critically about the weaknesses of their tools and work around them, the need to do so is fairly described as a flaw in the tool.