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> Agile is a time stuck and time waster How do you prefer to organize larger software development efforts that have to be coordinated with other business proce

> Agile is a time stuck and time waster How do you prefer to organize larger software development efforts that have to be coordinated with other business processes?

TimTheTinker 5y ago
Anything that treats software development as an iterative research and development process, lets engineers self-organize, respects their time, and respects that time estimate certainty is asymptotic with respect to the time horizon.
- jameshart 5y ago
  I’m sure I read something similar in some sort of manifesto...
  - bdcravens 5y ago
    And many companies filled with employees with "Agile" in their job title have probably never read it.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      Sure, but the top-level comment’s stated point wasn’t that, but rather that Agile is a waste of time, period. So I’m curious what other ways of working handle these kinds of projects better. Edit: This is a genuine question, I'd be very keen to hear concrete ideas on how to work better.
      - junon 5y ago
        Identify the problems first. Everyone is searching for a solution when half the time they don't even know what the problems are. Sure, releases might be slow. Why, though? Is it because you're not letting your engineers fix broken windows? How long does it take for PRs to get reviewed? If a long time, why? Do your engineers even know how to make proper commits? Are your PRs more than about 100 changes on average? Are you building your product from a prototype a non-programmer made? etc. There is no silver bullet, period. Searching for one indicates you're looking for workarounds to fundamental issues on your team.
        jameshart 5y ago
        I wonder if this is just a matter of having a very different frame of reference. Before agile became widespread, when someone said "We have a problem with slow releases" they meant "we schedule each release 18 months out and yet it always ships 6 to 12 months late." Now that agile practices are widespread in the industry, when someone says "we have a problem with slow releases" they often mean something like "sometimes the time from code change to it being in live in prod is more than a couple of days," or maybe "the CD job sometimes takes more than 20 minutes to push things to production." The problems you are describing above are problems that can only exist because of agile adoption. (kids today, get off my lawn, etc. etc.) Your biggest problem is that you have to wait a couple of days to get your PR reviewed? Before agile, replace that with 'you have to wait two weeks for your change to get integrated into the build then another week to get an incomplete bug report from the QA team'. And what's more, agile introduced the industry to tools for systematically, continuously identifying problems like 'the releases are slow' and letting the development teams themselves change the way they work to eliminate issues like 'we're not getting time to fix broken windows' or 'it takes us too long to review PRs'. My understanding of 'we're agile' is precisely 'we give teams space to change the way they work to eliminate things that cause them problems'. If someone tells me they reject agility, I would interpret that as them saying 'we don't let you change the way you do things', and 'you will be dependent on other teams who don't share your goals which will slow you down'. I think we're in violent agreement about what good software development practice looks like. I just can't believe how badly the word 'agile' has been warped to the point where people actively think it creates the very situations it set out to resolve.
- 3np 5y ago
  > asymptotic with respect to the time horizon. I don't get what you're trying to say here.
  - StevenWaterman 5y ago
    If I understood correctly, if I estimate something will take 5 minutes, and I'm doing it now, it'll probably take 5 minutes. If my estimate is 18 months and we don't start for another year, my estimate is worthless.
    - 3np 5y ago
      Ah, makes perfect sense. My brain was glitching a bit trying to make sense of it as "Anything that [...] is asymptotic with respect to the time horizon"
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  If Agile doesn’t achieve those things, which it explicitly is meant to do, are you familiar with any other methodology or set of guidelines that does?
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    Big-A Agile and Scrum don't do such a great job, but the principles of agility do. There's a book called Accelerate that describes and prescribes proven values and techniques that promote agility. Also, Don Reinertsen is awesome - check out his books on running a software organization based on lean principles.

> Agile is a time stuck and time waster How do you prefer to organize larger software development efforts that have to be coordinated with other business processes?

TimTheTinker 5y ago

Anything that treats software development as an iterative research and development process, lets engineers self-organize, respects their time, and respects that time estimate certainty is asymptotic with respect to the time horizon.

jameshart 5y ago
I’m sure I read something similar in some sort of manifesto...
- bdcravens 5y ago
  And many companies filled with employees with "Agile" in their job title have probably never read it.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    Sure, but the top-level comment’s stated point wasn’t that, but rather that Agile is a waste of time, period. So I’m curious what other ways of working handle these kinds of projects better. Edit: This is a genuine question, I'd be very keen to hear concrete ideas on how to work better.
    - junon 5y ago
      Identify the problems first. Everyone is searching for a solution when half the time they don't even know what the problems are. Sure, releases might be slow. Why, though? Is it because you're not letting your engineers fix broken windows? How long does it take for PRs to get reviewed? If a long time, why? Do your engineers even know how to make proper commits? Are your PRs more than about 100 changes on average? Are you building your product from a prototype a non-programmer made? etc. There is no silver bullet, period. Searching for one indicates you're looking for workarounds to fundamental issues on your team.
      - jameshart 5y ago
        I wonder if this is just a matter of having a very different frame of reference. Before agile became widespread, when someone said "We have a problem with slow releases" they meant "we schedule each release 18 months out and yet it always ships 6 to 12 months late." Now that agile practices are widespread in the industry, when someone says "we have a problem with slow releases" they often mean something like "sometimes the time from code change to it being in live in prod is more than a couple of days," or maybe "the CD job sometimes takes more than 20 minutes to push things to production." The problems you are describing above are problems that can only exist because of agile adoption. (kids today, get off my lawn, etc. etc.) Your biggest problem is that you have to wait a couple of days to get your PR reviewed? Before agile, replace that with 'you have to wait two weeks for your change to get integrated into the build then another week to get an incomplete bug report from the QA team'. And what's more, agile introduced the industry to tools for systematically, continuously identifying problems like 'the releases are slow' and letting the development teams themselves change the way they work to eliminate issues like 'we're not getting time to fix broken windows' or 'it takes us too long to review PRs'. My understanding of 'we're agile' is precisely 'we give teams space to change the way they work to eliminate things that cause them problems'. If someone tells me they reject agility, I would interpret that as them saying 'we don't let you change the way you do things', and 'you will be dependent on other teams who don't share your goals which will slow you down'. I think we're in violent agreement about what good software development practice looks like. I just can't believe how badly the word 'agile' has been warped to the point where people actively think it creates the very situations it set out to resolve.
3np 5y ago
> asymptotic with respect to the time horizon. I don't get what you're trying to say here.
- StevenWaterman 5y ago
  If I understood correctly, if I estimate something will take 5 minutes, and I'm doing it now, it'll probably take 5 minutes. If my estimate is 18 months and we don't start for another year, my estimate is worthless.
  - 3np 5y ago
    Ah, makes perfect sense. My brain was glitching a bit trying to make sense of it as "Anything that [...] is asymptotic with respect to the time horizon"
Cederfjard 5y ago
If Agile doesn’t achieve those things, which it explicitly is meant to do, are you familiar with any other methodology or set of guidelines that does?
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  Big-A Agile and Scrum don't do such a great job, but the principles of agility do. There's a book called Accelerate that describes and prescribes proven values and techniques that promote agility. Also, Don Reinertsen is awesome - check out his books on running a software organization based on lean principles.