4 ms·

Maybe Agile Is the Problem

24 points by clumsysmurf 7y ago

wodenokoto 7y ago
What are the alternatives to agile? As a junior I have only worked under 2 systems: “we want to do agile”, and agile with stand ups and user stories. Both have been presented as an alternative to waterfall, as if that are the two things you can do. For software with very little end user surface (big data pipeline with lots of Datawashing and training of different models that eventual spits out a prediction) user stories seems extremely shoehorned. “As an end user a want a product recommendation” and that’s your whole product right there. From there on it just starts getting awkward. “As a data ingestion pipeline I want data to ingest”. Seriously?
- officialchicken 7y ago
  You may not actually be practicing agile, rather participating in a cargo-cult of agile. Be aware of "magic" rituals versus required activities to keep moving the project forward. If it's software (w/o a manufacturing aspect) you're probably doing some variant of spiral-based development since software is never done - it's only abandoned. Hybrid-waterfall methodologies do exist, and it's cheaper to write specs and designs than to write and debug code. Use Given-When-Then (GWT) format specs to validate, because "As a birthday gift, I wanna pony" format doesn't verify and validate.
etripe 7y ago
Each time one of these articles is written, they forget some essentials: 1. homo sapiens sapiens evolved to collaborate with about 150 people 2. enterprises are the shared mythology to enable larger scale collaboration 3. part of that shared mythology is "corporate culture": a paraphrase for management culture Then people go on to conclude one of two extremes: a) Agile is the problem b) The way Agile was implemented is the problem Agile isn't the solution or the problem because it doesn't deal with issues of scale. Large scale collaboration is difficult because people think and act in local tribes: sales vs IT, business vs developers, etc. We're not seeing a crisis in methodologies. We're seeing a leadership crisis. Some of these real problems include: - failing to trust: let a person to do their job and give them the autonomy required to succeed - failing to plan: thinking in terms of quarterly budgets over multi-year plans - failing to support employees and instead shifting blame when things inevitably fail - failing to invest: minimal raises, mass layoffs, outsourcing... - failing to lead: having no vision, hiring silver bullet transformation coaches - failing to understand the market: not understanding what the core business or core demographic is, how to grow, how to do it sustainably (economically or ecologically) - failing morality: despite "corporate values", following the absolute minimum requirement of the law, lobbying to lower legal standards, sometimes to disastrous effect Not all of these apply to all companies, but too many do.

24 points by clumsysmurf 7y ago

What are the alternatives to agile? As a junior I have only worked under 2 systems: “we want to do agile”, and agile with stand ups and user stories. Both have been presented as an alternative to waterfall, as if that are the two things you can do. For software with very little end user surface (big data pipeline with lots of Datawashing and training of different models that eventual spits out a prediction) user stories seems extremely shoehorned. “As an end user a want a product recommendation” and that’s your whole product right there. From there on it just starts getting awkward. “As a data ingestion pipeline I want data to ingest”. Seriously?

officialchicken 7y ago
You may not actually be practicing agile, rather participating in a cargo-cult of agile. Be aware of "magic" rituals versus required activities to keep moving the project forward. If it's software (w/o a manufacturing aspect) you're probably doing some variant of spiral-based development since software is never done - it's only abandoned. Hybrid-waterfall methodologies do exist, and it's cheaper to write specs and designs than to write and debug code. Use Given-When-Then (GWT) format specs to validate, because "As a birthday gift, I wanna pony" format doesn't verify and validate.

etripe 7y ago

Each time one of these articles is written, they forget some essentials: 1. homo sapiens sapiens evolved to collaborate with about 150 people 2. enterprises are the shared mythology to enable larger scale collaboration 3. part of that shared mythology is "corporate culture": a paraphrase for management culture Then people go on to conclude one of two extremes: a) Agile is the problem b) The way Agile was implemented is the problem Agile isn't the solution or the problem because it doesn't deal with issues of scale. Large scale collaboration is difficult because people think and act in local tribes: sales vs IT, business vs developers, etc. We're not seeing a crisis in methodologies. We're seeing a leadership crisis. Some of these real problems include: - failing to trust: let a person to do their job and give them the autonomy required to succeed - failing to plan: thinking in terms of quarterly budgets over multi-year plans - failing to support employees and instead shifting blame when things inevitably fail - failing to invest: minimal raises, mass layoffs, outsourcing... - failing to lead: having no vision, hiring silver bullet transformation coaches - failing to understand the market: not understanding what the core business or core demographic is, how to grow, how to do it sustainably (economically or ecologically) - failing morality: despite "corporate values", following the absolute minimum requirement of the law, lobbying to lower legal standards, sometimes to disastrous effect Not all of these apply to all companies, but too many do.