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Agile never gave organizations a holistic, viable alternative to Waterfall. Because there’s a difference between theory and practice. Product work is more about

Agile never gave organizations a holistic, viable alternative to Waterfall. Because there’s a difference between theory and practice. Product work is more about practice. When we complain about “AINO” (Agile In Name Only), we’re not being honest with ourselves. I agree with most of the article. Specially the keep-learning part. All Agile did was put software development teams unfairly under a microscope. I believe Agile has been tremendously beneficial for the industry globally, especially in some subtle ways. For example, Agile says you have to communicate a lot, if you want to get software done. Here is the subtlety: if, today, you stop telling the average programmer to communicate, they will stop and go back to silo mode, "naturally". At least some of them. If you think about software at the industry scale, you have to think about a wide population which require processes. I was once working in a nice little company where, one day, they introduced agile. It was so much beneficial. Before, the bosses thought that talking was simply a lost of productivity. You're a programmer right? So code, don't talk. So we would develop software without talking to each other. After we had daily meetings, scrums things and stuff. Our velocity has sky-rocketed. You have to realise that before Agile, a fair portion of all software development projects that were started would simply bust and never get shipped. The code is a complete monster or the budget is nuked. When I started in the company I just mentioned, I started working on a codebase that was the worse code I've ever seen in my life. You would touch one line and everything would stop working. It was a condensed piece of spaghetti with hacks on top of hacks on top of hacks. Software architecture? That requires some talking and thinking, forget about that, not permitted. Now I agree with you, agile is not much useful for a hacker who consistently get software done and understand deeply what's happening. edit: not that I'm an agile guru or anything. Actually I only know the thing superficially. I show up at the meetings, when I'm ask how hard something is, I answer, then I mess around with my office friends. Still I can appreciate it works much better than any process the bosses can come up with.

b_tterc_p 7y ago
> You have to realise that before Agile, a fair portion of the software development projects that were started would simply bust and never get shipped. The code is a complete monster or the budget is nuked. This still happens, all the time?
- andyroid 7y ago
  The difference is that of ivory tower planning and the following phases of development, testing and a “big bang” release (waterfall) vs working with an MVP with the purpose of releasing as soon as possible and then work in iterations based off of actual feedback and demand (agile). If you manage to nuke your budget or create a monster of a code base already at the MVP stage no methodology is going to save you.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    I really do believe agile (or at least "not waterfall") has reduced the rate of major software flops. But I'd be fascinated to know how often it turns failures into successes, versus revealing failures earlier in the project cycle. Both are valuable, obviously. It's just interesting that part of Agile's value is in revealing engineer dysfunction or fundamentally bad ideas at the MVP stage instead of the completion stage.
    - braythwayt 7y ago
      Revealing failure early is at least as valuable as succeeding more! Imagine a system that couldn’t help you pick winning stocks, but It could cap the losers at 10% loss, maximum. You’d get rich. Very, very quickly.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      I'd be more inclined to give the credit for less software flops to the rise of the internet and the ability to update easily. Even traditional software projects are now much more incremental due to the ability to update once a week (FF, chrome, etc). That's had an effect regardless of agile.
      - andyroid 7y ago
        That’s a point, and I agile development would not be possible without the internet. But working incrementally based off of customer/user input is only possible after the first release. What was observed here was the huge number of projects that would previously fail without ever getting that point.
xfitm3 7y ago
I was interested in comp sci precisely because I didn't have to talk to people, an area where every interaction is a performance. I want to be alone - what's so wrong with that?
- kjsbfkjbf 7y ago
  There is nothing wrong with that, but careers under capitalism are about _signaling value_. I hope you find a place (or have found a place) where you're appreciated. :)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ok_coo 7y ago
    I'm not sure why you're being downvoted but some of the best career advice I've heard is someone saying you should assume when you go to work that you're working under a communist dictatorship. I.E. Toe the party line, make your boss look good, (pretend to) eat up the company propaganda, assume the leader(s) (C-suite) will do whatever they want, when they want, especially giving themselves bonuses regardless of company performance. It's a weird contrast to normal life, considering a lot of us live in democracies, but once I understood this and started acting accordingly, it helped me handle my work life.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      It is probably good advise for most cases but individually depends on the shop and culture. Like if you really should always wear a three piece suit to interviews regardless of what they request. Some are flatter, others are more hierarchical (ironically practice can fail to line up with org chart structures). Some are all about the politics, others don't have the luxury of self delusion or actually value the sort of brutal honesty to say "I have looked at the new framework - while trendy it is buggy inefficient crap." The ones who lack the luxury tend to be smaller but small size is no guarantee that they'll just say no to the flavor aid.
    - 7y ago
0815test 7y ago
> > All Agile did was put software development teams unfairly under a microscope. Most managers crave control over their teams; this is not something that Agile introduced. If anything, Agile let them use the sort of control they were already demanding towards more useful and productive goals, by introducing bazaar-like practices to centralized software development (release early, release often; shorten feedback loops as much as possible; make extensive use of refactoring, software testing and XP principles); while at the same time not being altogether incompatible with self-organizing development teams (these were mentioned in the original Agile manifesto, after all).
bezoisevil 7y ago
Agile is shit. It hasn't done anything but increase the cost of software and overhead for technical teams. It's ridiculous how much time is wasted just to "be agile". It's a scam, total scam sold to huge companies because it provides a high level overview of the work being completed.
lonelappde 7y ago
Agile is like AI. To the cynics, anything that works isn't Agile.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  Eh? I'd compare it to No True Scotsman, not AI: I mostly hear people insist that anything which doesn't work isn't Agile. I'm extremely grateful for the changes agile wrought on the software industry, and while I think many of the best insights have become commonplace, I don't think formal Agile methods are outdated or exhausted yet. But I do think formal Agile is extremely hard to do right, and has very common failure modes of knowingly-unrealistic planning, unproductive meetings, excess design changes, and tech debt neglected to ship MVPs. One measure of a methodology is how much value it provides when it's used right, and I agree that Agile shines here. But it's also worth asking how easy a method is to get right, and how gracefully it devolves when things aren't perfect. My experience is that agile advocates commonly neglect those parts, dismissing widespread frustration with 'bad agile' on the basis that if it had been implemented perfectly, those issues wouldn't have come up.
Bartweiss 7y ago
> You have to realise that before Agile, a fair portion of all software development projects that were started would simply bust and never get shipped. I have plenty of gripes with Agile, but there's definitely a "victim of its own success" aspect to the whole thing. "Agile in name only" is frustrating compared to a good system, but in many cases it's still far better than what came before it. Basic ideas like "we should expect requirements to change" and "if the programmer doesn't know what their code will be used for, something is wrong" weren't necessarily accepted prior to agile. Projects that are chaotic, mismanaged messes under AINO might well have been orderly deathmarches or cancelled outright in the past. Some of this progress is technological (source control, post-release patching, digital distribution), but some of it really does owe to Agile. It reminds me a bit of the scientific method. The elaborate eight-step thing taught in school feels like silly boilerplate, but it's shocking to realize that "ideas are tested by experiment" was a genuine breakthrough from a past that made major choices like disease treatments and scurvy cures based on 'reasoning' without testing them at all.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

> You have to realise that before Agile, a fair portion of the software development projects that were started would simply bust and never get shipped. The code is a complete monster or the budget is nuked. This still happens, all the time?

andyroid 7y ago
The difference is that of ivory tower planning and the following phases of development, testing and a “big bang” release (waterfall) vs working with an MVP with the purpose of releasing as soon as possible and then work in iterations based off of actual feedback and demand (agile). If you manage to nuke your budget or create a monster of a code base already at the MVP stage no methodology is going to save you.
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  I really do believe agile (or at least "not waterfall") has reduced the rate of major software flops. But I'd be fascinated to know how often it turns failures into successes, versus revealing failures earlier in the project cycle. Both are valuable, obviously. It's just interesting that part of Agile's value is in revealing engineer dysfunction or fundamentally bad ideas at the MVP stage instead of the completion stage.
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    Revealing failure early is at least as valuable as succeeding more! Imagine a system that couldn’t help you pick winning stocks, but It could cap the losers at 10% loss, maximum. You’d get rich. Very, very quickly.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    I'd be more inclined to give the credit for less software flops to the rise of the internet and the ability to update easily. Even traditional software projects are now much more incremental due to the ability to update once a week (FF, chrome, etc). That's had an effect regardless of agile.
    - andyroid 7y ago
      That’s a point, and I agile development would not be possible without the internet. But working incrementally based off of customer/user input is only possible after the first release. What was observed here was the huge number of projects that would previously fail without ever getting that point.

xfitm3 7y ago

I was interested in comp sci precisely because I didn't have to talk to people, an area where every interaction is a performance. I want to be alone - what's so wrong with that?

kjsbfkjbf 7y ago
There is nothing wrong with that, but careers under capitalism are about _signaling value_. I hope you find a place (or have found a place) where you're appreciated. :)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ok_coo 7y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being downvoted but some of the best career advice I've heard is someone saying you should assume when you go to work that you're working under a communist dictatorship. I.E. Toe the party line, make your boss look good, (pretend to) eat up the company propaganda, assume the leader(s) (C-suite) will do whatever they want, when they want, especially giving themselves bonuses regardless of company performance. It's a weird contrast to normal life, considering a lot of us live in democracies, but once I understood this and started acting accordingly, it helped me handle my work life.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    It is probably good advise for most cases but individually depends on the shop and culture. Like if you really should always wear a three piece suit to interviews regardless of what they request. Some are flatter, others are more hierarchical (ironically practice can fail to line up with org chart structures). Some are all about the politics, others don't have the luxury of self delusion or actually value the sort of brutal honesty to say "I have looked at the new framework - while trendy it is buggy inefficient crap." The ones who lack the luxury tend to be smaller but small size is no guarantee that they'll just say no to the flavor aid.
  - 7y ago

0815test 7y ago

> > All Agile did was put software development teams unfairly under a microscope. Most managers crave control over their teams; this is not something that Agile introduced. If anything, Agile let them use the sort of control they were already demanding towards more useful and productive goals, by introducing bazaar-like practices to centralized software development (release early, release often; shorten feedback loops as much as possible; make extensive use of refactoring, software testing and XP principles); while at the same time not being altogether incompatible with self-organizing development teams (these were mentioned in the original Agile manifesto, after all).

bezoisevil 7y ago

Agile is shit. It hasn't done anything but increase the cost of software and overhead for technical teams. It's ridiculous how much time is wasted just to "be agile". It's a scam, total scam sold to huge companies because it provides a high level overview of the work being completed.

lonelappde 7y ago

Agile is like AI. To the cynics, anything that works isn't Agile.

Bartweiss 7y ago
Eh? I'd compare it to No True Scotsman, not AI: I mostly hear people insist that anything which doesn't work isn't Agile. I'm extremely grateful for the changes agile wrought on the software industry, and while I think many of the best insights have become commonplace, I don't think formal Agile methods are outdated or exhausted yet. But I do think formal Agile is extremely hard to do right, and has very common failure modes of knowingly-unrealistic planning, unproductive meetings, excess design changes, and tech debt neglected to ship MVPs. One measure of a methodology is how much value it provides when it's used right, and I agree that Agile shines here. But it's also worth asking how easy a method is to get right, and how gracefully it devolves when things aren't perfect. My experience is that agile advocates commonly neglect those parts, dismissing widespread frustration with 'bad agile' on the basis that if it had been implemented perfectly, those issues wouldn't have come up.

Bartweiss 7y ago

> You have to realise that before Agile, a fair portion of all software development projects that were started would simply bust and never get shipped. I have plenty of gripes with Agile, but there's definitely a "victim of its own success" aspect to the whole thing. "Agile in name only" is frustrating compared to a good system, but in many cases it's still far better than what came before it. Basic ideas like "we should expect requirements to change" and "if the programmer doesn't know what their code will be used for, something is wrong" weren't necessarily accepted prior to agile. Projects that are chaotic, mismanaged messes under AINO might well have been orderly deathmarches or cancelled outright in the past. Some of this progress is technological (source control, post-release patching, digital distribution), but some of it really does owe to Agile. It reminds me a bit of the scientific method. The elaborate eight-step thing taught in school feels like silly boilerplate, but it's shocking to realize that "ideas are tested by experiment" was a genuine breakthrough from a past that made major choices like disease treatments and scurvy cures based on 'reasoning' without testing them at all.