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Agile is the worst form of software development methodology, second only to waterfall. It's still pretty shitty, though. One of the reasons Agile (with a big A
by quicklime 6y ago
Agile is the worst form of software development methodology, second only to waterfall. It's still pretty shitty, though.
One of the reasons Agile (with a big A) is so successful is that its peddlers have convinced everyone that there are only two options: Agile and waterfall. When you're up against a strawman, it's easy to win. But it's absolutely a false dichotomy.
There's a quote in the article that I like:
> Find me an actual tech company that talks much about Agile, and I will be astounded.
In my experience, people at tech companies (at least the FAANGs) rarely talk about Agile, although they do talk about things like continuous integration/testing/deployment. They do not obsess over methodologies for how to move post-it notes around a whiteboard (Scrum vs Kanban) or agonize over how to word a user story narrative, or other parts of Agile Theatre.
People at some non-tech companies, especially those supposedly going through a "digital transformation", seem to have fully bought in to the crap that Certified Agile consultants are selling though.
So a superior alternative to both Agile and waterfall is what's in use at a lot of the big tech companies. For example, the engineering culture at Google, which relies on design docs and a very good set of developer tools and infrastructure. It's not perfect, but it's far, far superior to Agile.
And before anyone makes the argument that those non-tech companies are not doing "real Agile", but Google is, let's be linguistic descriptivists and accept that Googlers don't call their methodology "Agile", whereas the Scrum consultants at big corporates do.
- parasubvert 6y agoThis is ultimately the point I think Mary is trying to make. Agile became and end to itself rather than a way to learn how to build software within minimal waste and delay given imperfect information. Obsessing over it is a cargo cult. That said , plenty of tech companies have inconsistent practices that don’t necessarily lead to great success. To say Google’s methods are “far far superior” to Agile assumes they’re uniform, portable or relevant externally, or that they lead to above average success. That’s debatable given Google’s reputation for abandoned half-built products and an almost comical lack of customer focus.
- cachestash 6y agoAre there any public examples of a google design doc? Would like to study it