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Why the Four Agile Values don't work: 1. Nobody applies rigor to anything complicated anymore. The only way you can produce anything that works without rigor i

Why the Four Agile Values don't work: 1. Nobody applies rigor to anything complicated anymore. The only way you can produce anything that works without rigor is to only produce very small things that you can prove work. So you can produce a lot of very small work and say "I'm developing so fast!", and meanwhile all the components connected together can be a tire fire. Short-term wins and long-term pain. This applies to a lot of the Agile process, but also the avoidance of processes and tools. Processes and tools can help or hurt, depending on how you use them. Even Agile is a process. 2. Working "software" is completely meaningless. What is actually valuable is a working solution to a user problem. I can make a program that very reliably spins in a loop forever, doing nothing. Who the fuck wants that? Not a user. And a large system, which is what a lot of software today is written for, cannot be connected together, operated, troubleshooted, etc without documentation. Nobody's going to be able to run your software or fix it when it breaks if they have no documentation, because they didn't write your software, so they have no fucking idea what to do with it. So we end up with a lot of unmaintainable widgets that don't solve user problems. 3. No software developer actually collaborates with a customer, because software developers have never cared about a customer. They care about their precious code, their algorithms, their design, their bugs, their tests. They don't care if the customer hates the software. I have literally never heard a developer utter the words "so how does the customer like the software?" This whole rule of customer collaboration is just an excuse not to have to think about a contract. 4. 'Responding to change' pretty much just means 'push out shit software and wait for bug reports'. For the first year of operation, Agile software is garbage. Because there was no coherent plan, it doesn't work for the customer, it isn't maintainable, and the other parts of a complex system that it operates as a part of will constantly break in weird ways. We don't need to make a plan, so we don't need to figure out how this thing is supposed to work, so in 6 months when we finally get around to a customer use case, we'll realize this architecture never would have worked within the constraints they're running it in. Software development is not 'too damn complex'. Software developers are just lazy. We know that, because developers brag about being lazy all the time (I do too). They have these huge egos, and they believe that they're intelligent or talented because they can design an efficient algorithm or create 'beautiful code'. But the end result of all that code is what matters, not the code itself. Agile is simply a 180-degree reaction to decades of work in developing processes that result in reliable solutions. The processes got complicated, so the software developers said, "fuck it, i'm just going to wing it". And as a result, most modern software is less reliable and more complicated than decades-old systems that are both simpler and solve more problems.

Swizec 5y ago
> No software developer actually collaborates with a customer, because software developers have never cared about a customer. They care about their precious code, their algorithms, their design, their bugs, their tests. They don't care if the customer hates the software. I have literally never heard a developer utter the words "so how does the customer like the software?" This whole rule of customer collaboration is just an excuse not to have to think about a contract. You need to start working with better developers. Where I’ve worked, developers consistently and often push back on Product Manager requests when it feels like they aren’t solving the user’s actual problem.
- andrewingram 5y ago
  Yeah. I’ve worked with developers with varying degrees of interest in the overall user problem, but that level of interest has never been less than “some”, and usually they fight just as hard as designers and product managers for solutions that truly solve the user’s problems.
marcinzm 5y ago
I think you should look into why you keep ending up with such a-hole indifferent developers as coworkers. The ones I've worked with have in vast majority of cases cared about the problem being solved and didn't have large egos (too much imposter syndrome if anything).
jboy55 5y ago
My response; > Nobody applies rigor to anything complicated anymore. No one ever did. There was no golden period before Agile, where rigor was applied but now we've gone all soft. Before Agile, tire fires were bigger and found much later. That's why they developed Agile. Process and tools can indeed help, but the point of what we are doing in development, is to build working software, not to just follow the process or use the tools. That may seem obvious, but it wasn't and it still isn't, you see many leaders, even in "Agile" environments, who are more comfortable being able to report the process is working, than to challenge a customer to build a better product. > What is actually valuable is a working solution to a user problem That is obviously what they are talking about. You are creating straw men. The root of this sentence comes somewhat from Gall's law, "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system" 3. You don't have a very extensive work history if you've never found engineers who care about customers. I would look at successful companies and successful startups. "Agile is simply a 180-degree reaction to decades of work in developing processes that result in reliable solutions." Its not, its the gradual evolution of software processes, its over 20 years old at this point, its predated by other Agile processes. It came from study of project failures. The more I re-read your rant, the more I realize either you are intentionally trying to create a stereotypical reaction to Agile or you are deeply disturbed. If you are a software engineer, you should just quit, why are you doing something that makes you so unhappy? This is so beyond reality its absurd. Agile is not some "giving everyone a trophy" bs.

Swizec 5y ago

> No software developer actually collaborates with a customer, because software developers have never cared about a customer. They care about their precious code, their algorithms, their design, their bugs, their tests. They don't care if the customer hates the software. I have literally never heard a developer utter the words "so how does the customer like the software?" This whole rule of customer collaboration is just an excuse not to have to think about a contract. You need to start working with better developers. Where I’ve worked, developers consistently and often push back on Product Manager requests when it feels like they aren’t solving the user’s actual problem.

andrewingram 5y ago
Yeah. I’ve worked with developers with varying degrees of interest in the overall user problem, but that level of interest has never been less than “some”, and usually they fight just as hard as designers and product managers for solutions that truly solve the user’s problems.

marcinzm 5y ago

I think you should look into why you keep ending up with such a-hole indifferent developers as coworkers. The ones I've worked with have in vast majority of cases cared about the problem being solved and didn't have large egos (too much imposter syndrome if anything).

jboy55 5y ago

My response; > Nobody applies rigor to anything complicated anymore. No one ever did. There was no golden period before Agile, where rigor was applied but now we've gone all soft. Before Agile, tire fires were bigger and found much later. That's why they developed Agile. Process and tools can indeed help, but the point of what we are doing in development, is to build working software, not to just follow the process or use the tools. That may seem obvious, but it wasn't and it still isn't, you see many leaders, even in "Agile" environments, who are more comfortable being able to report the process is working, than to challenge a customer to build a better product. > What is actually valuable is a working solution to a user problem That is obviously what they are talking about. You are creating straw men. The root of this sentence comes somewhat from Gall's law, "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system" 3. You don't have a very extensive work history if you've never found engineers who care about customers. I would look at successful companies and successful startups. "Agile is simply a 180-degree reaction to decades of work in developing processes that result in reliable solutions." Its not, its the gradual evolution of software processes, its over 20 years old at this point, its predated by other Agile processes. It came from study of project failures. The more I re-read your rant, the more I realize either you are intentionally trying to create a stereotypical reaction to Agile or you are deeply disturbed. If you are a software engineer, you should just quit, why are you doing something that makes you so unhappy? This is so beyond reality its absurd. Agile is not some "giving everyone a trophy" bs.