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Every "Agile" shop I've worked in was awful and has been doing it wrong according to Agile fans. "That wasn't true Agile" is starting to sound about as credibl

by jcadam 7y ago

Every "Agile" shop I've worked in was awful and has been doing it wrong according to Agile fans. "That wasn't true Agile" is starting to sound about as credible as "That wasn't true Communism." Best methodology: Self-organizing teams of experienced, expert engineers. Let them develop whatever process works best for the individual team and project. That requires two things: 1. Hiring the right people. 2. Trusting them. Most companies aren't willing to do this, so... we get a semi-unstructured form of micro-management hell which goes by the name "Agile." Regardless of whatever that term originally meant, this is what it means now.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
“Self-organizing teams of experienced, expert engineers. Let them develop whatever process works best for the individual team and project.” That’s what “Agile” is when you read the Agile Manifesto. It seems every reasonable methodology quickly gets perverted by leadership to a top down, dogmatic dictatorship caricature of itself. Happened to OOP, Agile, will probably happen to FP. You could argue that what Lenin and friends did in Russia was also not what Marx had in mind.
- thu2111 7y ago
  This is what agile proponents always say. Whatever someone is suggesting, that's agile. It appears to mean nothing. Here, you're saying that the agile manifesto literally says nothing beyond "let people make up whatever process they want", which boils down to nothing at all. If that's really the case then agile as a concept may as well not exist. But we have story points, epics, scrums, retros etc. Agile is very much more than that.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    You have to look at how Agile was started. Before it often projects were planned out in detail beforehand and then they tried to execute that plan without changes. As it turned out that often didn’t work. So the Agile Manifesto writers tried to explain that software is unpredictable and you have to make sure people can adapt to changes. Scrum as a base methodology isn’t too bad either but as always management prefers precise plans and a lot of Agile consultants are happy to feed that. Saying “let people make up whatever process they want” is actually quite profound because it often goes complete against what management wants.
  - meheleventyone 7y ago
    I think people just confuse Agile the manifesto and various methodologies that claim to adhere to it. You can work in a way that meets the manifesto without any of those concepts that are tied to it through things like Scrum. Most “no true agile” posts are really “no true scrum” because the issue is firmly in process and methodology rather than underlying principles. In fact I’d say Scrum itself whilst designed to meet the principles doesn’t actually do so in practice.
- acephal 7y ago
  Even granting Marx wasn't particularly specific, the specific invention of Leninism, the Party as "intermediary" between the proletariat and History with a capital H, is conceived of absolutely nowhere in Marx's work, but the 'perversion' of Marxism to Leninism to Maoism is no different than the 'perversion' of Agile to Scrum to SAFE; there's no 'perversion' at all, because the idea of "lineage", while it works for and describes sequences of organic structures, is completely unfit for understanding ideas and how and why they change, to the point that its difficult to really use the word "origin" when it comes to ideas, particularly when each phase distinguishes itself from the last by what problems its trying to solve, the constraints on solutions, etc. We can only really talk about them being related insofar as there are structural identities in the concepts but that's about it. If this is clear and understood, congratulations, you basically understand the gist of the French historian Michel Foucault's criticism of modernity (it supposes origins and progress when no such thing actually exists, so how do we talk about politics, history, ethics?), a criticism which would go on to inform all of contemporary Left politics, including contemporary progressivism and identity politics.
BurningFrog 7y ago
> "That wasn't true Agile" is starting to sound about as credible as "That wasn't true Communism." The difference is that many people have worked on highly functional "real agile" teams and can tell the tale. > Best methodology: Self-organizing teams of experienced, expert engineers. Minor quibble: While that is of course the best scenario, it can also work quite well with a few experts guiding the less experienced. Pair programming works wonders here. If your team is all inexperienced newbs, I don't know what can save your project :) > Regardless of whatever that term originally meant, this is what it means now. Perhaps. I have no interest in debating word definitions though.
- stanferder 7y ago
  > The difference is that many people have worked on highly functional "real agile" teams and can tell the tale. Sure, but is it really the "agility" or the people making the difference? The highly functional teams I've worked on either ignored or satirized the elements of Agile development (e.g. the "story" format, story points, any sincere effort at estimation poker) to get out of those discussions as quickly as possible. This probably bears some similarity to how the original "Agile" developers dealt with the preceding methodologies.
  - meheleventyone 7y ago
    Both these things are directly written in the Agile principles. “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” So based on your description those teams were Agile in the sense meant by the manifesto.
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    You know, that is a fair point! The great Agile teams I was on had really good people on them. So, sure, they might have done great work in other environments. Then again, this was the methodology they chose. It also sounds like the teams you describe picked their own way of developing, which, in a Big Picture sense, is all the Agile Manifesto says: Let the team control their own work, and get out of the way. Which, in a lawyerly and annoying, but still kinda true way, makes that team agile too :)

by jcadam 7y ago

Ididntdothis 7y ago

“Self-organizing teams of experienced, expert engineers. Let them develop whatever process works best for the individual team and project.” That’s what “Agile” is when you read the Agile Manifesto. It seems every reasonable methodology quickly gets perverted by leadership to a top down, dogmatic dictatorship caricature of itself. Happened to OOP, Agile, will probably happen to FP. You could argue that what Lenin and friends did in Russia was also not what Marx had in mind.

thu2111 7y ago
This is what agile proponents always say. Whatever someone is suggesting, that's agile. It appears to mean nothing. Here, you're saying that the agile manifesto literally says nothing beyond "let people make up whatever process they want", which boils down to nothing at all. If that's really the case then agile as a concept may as well not exist. But we have story points, epics, scrums, retros etc. Agile is very much more than that.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  You have to look at how Agile was started. Before it often projects were planned out in detail beforehand and then they tried to execute that plan without changes. As it turned out that often didn’t work. So the Agile Manifesto writers tried to explain that software is unpredictable and you have to make sure people can adapt to changes. Scrum as a base methodology isn’t too bad either but as always management prefers precise plans and a lot of Agile consultants are happy to feed that. Saying “let people make up whatever process they want” is actually quite profound because it often goes complete against what management wants.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  I think people just confuse Agile the manifesto and various methodologies that claim to adhere to it. You can work in a way that meets the manifesto without any of those concepts that are tied to it through things like Scrum. Most “no true agile” posts are really “no true scrum” because the issue is firmly in process and methodology rather than underlying principles. In fact I’d say Scrum itself whilst designed to meet the principles doesn’t actually do so in practice.
acephal 7y ago
Even granting Marx wasn't particularly specific, the specific invention of Leninism, the Party as "intermediary" between the proletariat and History with a capital H, is conceived of absolutely nowhere in Marx's work, but the 'perversion' of Marxism to Leninism to Maoism is no different than the 'perversion' of Agile to Scrum to SAFE; there's no 'perversion' at all, because the idea of "lineage", while it works for and describes sequences of organic structures, is completely unfit for understanding ideas and how and why they change, to the point that its difficult to really use the word "origin" when it comes to ideas, particularly when each phase distinguishes itself from the last by what problems its trying to solve, the constraints on solutions, etc. We can only really talk about them being related insofar as there are structural identities in the concepts but that's about it. If this is clear and understood, congratulations, you basically understand the gist of the French historian Michel Foucault's criticism of modernity (it supposes origins and progress when no such thing actually exists, so how do we talk about politics, history, ethics?), a criticism which would go on to inform all of contemporary Left politics, including contemporary progressivism and identity politics.

BurningFrog 7y ago

> "That wasn't true Agile" is starting to sound about as credible as "That wasn't true Communism." The difference is that many people have worked on highly functional "real agile" teams and can tell the tale. > Best methodology: Self-organizing teams of experienced, expert engineers. Minor quibble: While that is of course the best scenario, it can also work quite well with a few experts guiding the less experienced. Pair programming works wonders here. If your team is all inexperienced newbs, I don't know what can save your project :) > Regardless of whatever that term originally meant, this is what it means now. Perhaps. I have no interest in debating word definitions though.

stanferder 7y ago
> The difference is that many people have worked on highly functional "real agile" teams and can tell the tale. Sure, but is it really the "agility" or the people making the difference? The highly functional teams I've worked on either ignored or satirized the elements of Agile development (e.g. the "story" format, story points, any sincere effort at estimation poker) to get out of those discussions as quickly as possible. This probably bears some similarity to how the original "Agile" developers dealt with the preceding methodologies.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  Both these things are directly written in the Agile principles. “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.” So based on your description those teams were Agile in the sense meant by the manifesto.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  You know, that is a fair point! The great Agile teams I was on had really good people on them. So, sure, they might have done great work in other environments. Then again, this was the methodology they chose. It also sounds like the teams you describe picked their own way of developing, which, in a Big Picture sense, is all the Agile Manifesto says: Let the team control their own work, and get out of the way. Which, in a lawyerly and annoying, but still kinda true way, makes that team agile too :)