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> 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

> 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.
Bartweiss 7y ago
I have the subjective sense that the rate of massive, irreparable flops in software has gone down a lot. (Very anecdotally, the latest "permanent failure" on Wikipedia's list of major failed software projects is from 2014. That list is worth a read regardless.) Projects still get cancelled, budgets and timelines get blown out, features and testing get compromised. But at least in dedicated software companies, it's pretty rare for something to get through 90% (or 150%) of its allotted development time and then be completely discarded as unsalvageable. (For technical reasons; market changes are a different beast.) Projects in technical crisis are either apparent sooner or have usable elements, rather than failing outright at the end of a waterfall. Of course, there's a lot of room to debate what changed and why. If Agile led projects to fail sooner or less dramatically, that's still important, but less notable than if it changed them into successes. And a lot of technological advances have helped too; things that might have been outright failures as shrinkwrapped software can become late or overrun projects in the era of digital distribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_and_overbudget_custom_software_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_and_overbudget_...
mixmastamyk 7y ago
When that point is reached much more quickly, it saves $$$.

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.

Bartweiss 7y ago

I have the subjective sense that the rate of massive, irreparable flops in software has gone down a lot. (Very anecdotally, the latest "permanent failure" on Wikipedia's list of major failed software projects is from 2014. That list is worth a read regardless.) Projects still get cancelled, budgets and timelines get blown out, features and testing get compromised. But at least in dedicated software companies, it's pretty rare for something to get through 90% (or 150%) of its allotted development time and then be completely discarded as unsalvageable. (For technical reasons; market changes are a different beast.) Projects in technical crisis are either apparent sooner or have usable elements, rather than failing outright at the end of a waterfall. Of course, there's a lot of room to debate what changed and why. If Agile led projects to fail sooner or less dramatically, that's still important, but less notable than if it changed them into successes. And a lot of technological advances have helped too; things that might have been outright failures as shrinkwrapped software can become late or overrun projects in the era of digital distribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_and_overbudget_custom_software_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_failed_and_overbudget_...

mixmastamyk 7y ago

When that point is reached much more quickly, it saves $$$.