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That's not what I was trying to say, but I can understand why you'd think that. The deeper point was this: "Agile" started out as a grassroots movement among pr

That's not what I was trying to say, but I can understand why you'd think that. The deeper point was this: "Agile" started out as a grassroots movement among programmers. As a grassroots movement, it got enough people excited, and experienced enough success, that it moved into the mainstream. Now that Agile is in the mainstream, it's attracting attention from people who aren't willing or able to put in the effort required to really understand or do it well. That kind of shallowness has always existed--not just for Agile--but it used to be that the worst those people would do is publish a blowhard essay like the "counterpoint" you linked, then go away. Mainstream Agile isn't so lucky. Now the shallow people don't just flame and go away. They want Agile, but they don't want to work at it. A particularly poisonous subset sees dollar signs and starts offering highly dubious training, certification, and consulting services. Both groups put in something that says "Agile" on the tin but doesn't actually work. And, sadly, there are more people interested in quick-and-easy than there are people who are interested in slow-thoughtful-and-rigorous. They outnumber, and outshout, the rest of us. As a result, the quick-and-easy (and non-functional) approach to Agile is taking over, and the original Agile that I got so excited about is going away. The interesting, motivated, exciting programmers I like to work with are moving on to other things. I wrote that essay three years ago. It's even easier now to see a future in which Agile is just another bloated excuse for managers to treat their staff badly. That makes me sad, but I'll live, and I'll keep fighting the good fight.

gruseom 16y ago
"Agile" started out as a grassroots movement among programmers. That's not true. "Agile" started out as a meeting of methodologists: http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/ Most people there weren't making a living as programmers and they certainly weren't at the meeting qua programmers. As far as I can tell, only one person on that list (Ward Cunningham) made a name for himself as a hacker. It's true that the Agile people wanted to make corporate software projects less completely hostile to programmers, but it's also true that they were process-oriented from the beginning, i.e. theorizing about how software should be built and convincing others to follow their theories. These are people who make their living writing, consulting, and training, not by writing code or by being personally responsible for particular projects. This gap between theory (often dressed as expertise) and practice is IMO one of the curses of the software industry. Agile may have had some marginal benefit but it also introduced a whole bunch of new ideology. Certainly this was evident as early as 2003-2004 when I was spending time in that crowd. An example of a real grassroots movement among programmers is open-source software.
- jdlshore 16y ago
  The name "Agile" was coined in 2001, but the movement now known as Agile started in the late 90's. I've been involved with it for 11 years. It was most certainly a grass-roots movement when it started. Much of the early discussion took place on the C2 wiki and can still be seen--look there to see for yourself.
- parasubvert 16y ago
  XP, the real catalyst to agile, was born out of the Smalltalk hacker community with Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham in particular. They're the furthest from methodologists I could imagine. The only professional methodologists on the agile manifesto, for that matter, were Alistair Cockburn and maybe Jim Highsmith. And even they were all about preaching for less paperwork & process. The rest were in the trenches software team leads or (at worst) software consultants like Martin Fowler.
  - gruseom 16y ago
    I'm talking about people who prescribe rules for others about how to make software. In this sense, XP is thoroughly methodological. I know something about the Smalltalk history. It doesn't change the point: there is a gulf between people who live by selling prescriptions about how to make software (writing, consulting, training, and so on) and people who live by making software. This is the fundamental problem with Agile, not dilution-by-becoming-mainstream as the OP and others say. Why does the gulf arise in the first place? I think it's because in the dysfunctional corporate software economy, programmers are low-status and there is a ceiling on how much money and status can be accrued in that role. One way to break the ceiling is by becoming a high-end consultant, writing and speaking and so on. If you pull this transition off, you can charge thousands of dollars a day and be esteemed. The trouble is that now you are no longer making software for a living. You are in the world of hype and ideology. Your customers are people inside corporations who write cheques, a constituency that has nothing to do with the culture or practice of software. This has consequences: it casts you adrift, it dulls the mind, it encourages bullshit. Then the rationalizations begin: I'm trying to make the system a little better, etc., I can have leverage by reaching more people this way, etc. This path may lead to billable hours but it puts one at risk of creative rot. The fundamental mistake of Agile was trying to improve the broken world of corporate software by selling to it rather than competing with it.

gruseom 16y ago

"Agile" started out as a grassroots movement among programmers. That's not true. "Agile" started out as a meeting of methodologists: http://agilemanifesto.org/ http://agilemanifesto.org/ Most people there weren't making a living as programmers and they certainly weren't at the meeting qua programmers. As far as I can tell, only one person on that list (Ward Cunningham) made a name for himself as a hacker. It's true that the Agile people wanted to make corporate software projects less completely hostile to programmers, but it's also true that they were process-oriented from the beginning, i.e. theorizing about how software should be built and convincing others to follow their theories. These are people who make their living writing, consulting, and training, not by writing code or by being personally responsible for particular projects. This gap between theory (often dressed as expertise) and practice is IMO one of the curses of the software industry. Agile may have had some marginal benefit but it also introduced a whole bunch of new ideology. Certainly this was evident as early as 2003-2004 when I was spending time in that crowd. An example of a real grassroots movement among programmers is open-source software.

jdlshore 16y ago
The name "Agile" was coined in 2001, but the movement now known as Agile started in the late 90's. I've been involved with it for 11 years. It was most certainly a grass-roots movement when it started. Much of the early discussion took place on the C2 wiki and can still be seen--look there to see for yourself.
parasubvert 16y ago
XP, the real catalyst to agile, was born out of the Smalltalk hacker community with Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham in particular. They're the furthest from methodologists I could imagine. The only professional methodologists on the agile manifesto, for that matter, were Alistair Cockburn and maybe Jim Highsmith. And even they were all about preaching for less paperwork & process. The rest were in the trenches software team leads or (at worst) software consultants like Martin Fowler.
- gruseom 16y ago
  I'm talking about people who prescribe rules for others about how to make software. In this sense, XP is thoroughly methodological. I know something about the Smalltalk history. It doesn't change the point: there is a gulf between people who live by selling prescriptions about how to make software (writing, consulting, training, and so on) and people who live by making software. This is the fundamental problem with Agile, not dilution-by-becoming-mainstream as the OP and others say. Why does the gulf arise in the first place? I think it's because in the dysfunctional corporate software economy, programmers are low-status and there is a ceiling on how much money and status can be accrued in that role. One way to break the ceiling is by becoming a high-end consultant, writing and speaking and so on. If you pull this transition off, you can charge thousands of dollars a day and be esteemed. The trouble is that now you are no longer making software for a living. You are in the world of hype and ideology. Your customers are people inside corporations who write cheques, a constituency that has nothing to do with the culture or practice of software. This has consequences: it casts you adrift, it dulls the mind, it encourages bullshit. Then the rationalizations begin: I'm trying to make the system a little better, etc., I can have leverage by reaching more people this way, etc. This path may lead to billable hours but it puts one at risk of creative rot. The fundamental mistake of Agile was trying to improve the broken world of corporate software by selling to it rather than competing with it.