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“Scrumfall” - Sounds fun /s >> So I am left extremely cynical about the “ideal sequential development” Off course, in development/engineering work that has un

“Scrumfall” - Sounds fun /s >> So I am left extremely cynical about the “ideal sequential development” Off course, in development/engineering work that has unknowns. But taking TFA example of building houses, most / all developers would do the foundations of all the houses first before moving on i.e. working sequentially.

braythwayt 8y ago
I have zero to say about TFA’s example, as it is discussing iterating over releases of a longer scale than most people are thinking of when arguing sequential versus iterative development. In my environment, we “inspect and adapt” every two weeks, and we tend to do marketing launches a couple of times a year. But SpaceX was not launching rockets into space every two weeks, so their “iterations” from the outside look more like most companies’ product launches, not like sprints or whatever people call their iterations that happen on a fortnightly or monthly scale.
smokey_jomo 8y ago
As someone living in a housing development that’s being built around them, this isn’t true in the case I see. 2 important reasons are: 1) the project is around 6 years in total 2) the company has to fix any issues with the house for the first 2 years. If they did all the foundations first, they’d have exactly the problem described in the article - no money till right at the end. Instead, they get money the entire way along and use that to finance the rest of the project. This isn’t an optimisation, iterative delivery is essential to their viability as a business. They also eat the support costs on houses they build. That means they are repeatedly changing “features” in the houses to minimise those support costs. Just walking down 1 street you can see the evolution of the houses over time as they fixed various small issues with the original design. The houses look basically the same to a casual observer, but are quite stark to someone who lives in one of the versions. They are very obviously agile, and have a great system for inspecting and adapting. That doesnt happen on 2 week cycles, but it does happen at a pace appropriate for them.

braythwayt 8y ago

I have zero to say about TFA’s example, as it is discussing iterating over releases of a longer scale than most people are thinking of when arguing sequential versus iterative development. In my environment, we “inspect and adapt” every two weeks, and we tend to do marketing launches a couple of times a year. But SpaceX was not launching rockets into space every two weeks, so their “iterations” from the outside look more like most companies’ product launches, not like sprints or whatever people call their iterations that happen on a fortnightly or monthly scale.

smokey_jomo 8y ago

As someone living in a housing development that’s being built around them, this isn’t true in the case I see. 2 important reasons are: 1) the project is around 6 years in total 2) the company has to fix any issues with the house for the first 2 years. If they did all the foundations first, they’d have exactly the problem described in the article - no money till right at the end. Instead, they get money the entire way along and use that to finance the rest of the project. This isn’t an optimisation, iterative delivery is essential to their viability as a business. They also eat the support costs on houses they build. That means they are repeatedly changing “features” in the houses to minimise those support costs. Just walking down 1 street you can see the evolution of the houses over time as they fixed various small issues with the original design. The houses look basically the same to a casual observer, but are quite stark to someone who lives in one of the versions. They are very obviously agile, and have a great system for inspecting and adapting. That doesnt happen on 2 week cycles, but it does happen at a pace appropriate for them.