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When something develops to an extreme, it becomes its opposite. This is true for "agile". Agile has become synonymous with "Jira", which is a direct contradicti

by cesium 6y ago

When something develops to an extreme, it becomes its opposite. This is true for "agile". Agile has become synonymous with "Jira", which is a direct contradiction of its original premise. The original "Agile Manifesto" states: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, Responding to change over following a plan. Ask somebody these days what agile means and they'll tell you "Jira" or some other tool combined with heavy process. Another example of people confusing the means for the end itself.

temac 6y ago
And also ask people if they really want all of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, Responding to change over following a plan." That might not really make sense in some industries... And if they really want to consider all of that in a dichotomous way. Who really does not want "working software", and why would I even have to "prefer" that? this is just too much fundamental that we could as well say: we don't want to work on garbage projects, and it is stupid to have an extremely good documentation of a pile of crap. But why jettison documentation if "working software" is not even considered optional to begin with? I fucking want stellar documentation. Because why not? I'm tired of reading source code all day to try to understand what things were even supposed to do... In some industries "agile" in its original definition can make sense. In others, not at all. Yet, tons of people will pretend they do "Agile" regardless of what it is, what they think it is, and of what they do. This is sometimes some kind of management virtue signaling; except it is not signaling positive things anymore to those who work. It really has no meaning anymore. To be honest I'm not even sure it ever had, as implemented by most, out of the industry it came from (with associated practices that were also highly contextual) People should just avoid focusing on fashionable shallow words, and skip right to the ideas: if all of Agile and even all of Scrum is what will make your project shine, just do it, but writing essays about it is not really doing it, nor is pretending it is a kind of universal panacea, nor constructing consulting services around cult practices. If you must do the complete opposite; do the complete opposite. And tell everybody you are "agile" without an once of shame, if that can help raising money or stupid shit like that -- I mean what is even more agile than doing otherwise than "Agile" if it is a better idea in your context; so you are not even lying :p

by cesium 6y ago

temac 6y ago

And also ask people if they really want all of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Working software over comprehensive documentation, Customer collaboration over contract negotiation, Responding to change over following a plan." That might not really make sense in some industries... And if they really want to consider all of that in a dichotomous way. Who really does not want "working software", and why would I even have to "prefer" that? this is just too much fundamental that we could as well say: we don't want to work on garbage projects, and it is stupid to have an extremely good documentation of a pile of crap. But why jettison documentation if "working software" is not even considered optional to begin with? I fucking want stellar documentation. Because why not? I'm tired of reading source code all day to try to understand what things were even supposed to do... In some industries "agile" in its original definition can make sense. In others, not at all. Yet, tons of people will pretend they do "Agile" regardless of what it is, what they think it is, and of what they do. This is sometimes some kind of management virtue signaling; except it is not signaling positive things anymore to those who work. It really has no meaning anymore. To be honest I'm not even sure it ever had, as implemented by most, out of the industry it came from (with associated practices that were also highly contextual) People should just avoid focusing on fashionable shallow words, and skip right to the ideas: if all of Agile and even all of Scrum is what will make your project shine, just do it, but writing essays about it is not really doing it, nor is pretending it is a kind of universal panacea, nor constructing consulting services around cult practices. If you must do the complete opposite; do the complete opposite. And tell everybody you are "agile" without an once of shame, if that can help raising money or stupid shit like that -- I mean what is even more agile than doing otherwise than "Agile" if it is a better idea in your context; so you are not even lying :p