3 ms·

> The key to their failure was that they never put the pieces together. > So agile is a bunch of techniques to let people work together Never integrating the

by jjav 6y ago

> The key to their failure was that they never put the pieces together. > So agile is a bunch of techniques to let people work together Never integrating the parts until the end has nothing to do with not having used "agile". It's just terrible engineering. Quality engineering work has been getting done for decades before the agile cargo cult of daily status meetings aka "agile".

talkingtab 6y ago
I am no defender of agile as I have seen it implemented as a cargo cult. So yes, quality engineering can happen without it. However, the communication that can/should/could be provided by agile is required by quality engineering. My first experience with seeing how effective this communication can be was before agile when a manager held short, goofy meetings once a week and we engineers somehow managed to ship, ship on time, and ship reasonable products.
dkdbejwi383 6y ago
> Never integrating the parts until the end has nothing to do with not having used "agile". It's just terrible engineering. I don't disagree with this exactly, but agile is/can be a useful tool to keep engineering on the rails. It's not like if you do agile, you can forget about engineering practices because you've got agile instead. It just reinforces why good engineering is important, and acts as a stick to keep engineering teams on track. A bit like how with good tests, you just can't get away with sloppy code, because having tests necessitates following best practices.
- jjav 6y ago
  Yes, true. But this points at the annoying thing about how the agile cult attempts to take over credit for the good engineering practices that all existed before agile became a thing. All agile adds on top is the annoying parts (relentless status meetings, treating developers as faceless interchangeable "resources") that make life worse than it was before.

by jjav 6y ago

talkingtab 6y ago

I am no defender of agile as I have seen it implemented as a cargo cult. So yes, quality engineering can happen without it. However, the communication that can/should/could be provided by agile is required by quality engineering. My first experience with seeing how effective this communication can be was before agile when a manager held short, goofy meetings once a week and we engineers somehow managed to ship, ship on time, and ship reasonable products.

dkdbejwi383 6y ago

> Never integrating the parts until the end has nothing to do with not having used "agile". It's just terrible engineering. I don't disagree with this exactly, but agile is/can be a useful tool to keep engineering on the rails. It's not like if you do agile, you can forget about engineering practices because you've got agile instead. It just reinforces why good engineering is important, and acts as a stick to keep engineering teams on track. A bit like how with good tests, you just can't get away with sloppy code, because having tests necessitates following best practices.

jjav 6y ago
Yes, true. But this points at the annoying thing about how the agile cult attempts to take over credit for the good engineering practices that all existed before agile became a thing. All agile adds on top is the annoying parts (relentless status meetings, treating developers as faceless interchangeable "resources") that make life worse than it was before.