4 ms·

In my few years working as a dev, I am absolutely convinced that scrum and agile are the worst possible development practices you can have from the perspective

In my few years working as a dev, I am absolutely convinced that scrum and agile are the worst possible development practices you can have from the perspective of a developer, even though they are sold as 'developer centric' or that seems to be the impression a lot of people have at least. It makes no sense at all to me to constantly have work interrupted with customer meetings that produce NO concrete specifications because everything is expected to be done just-in-time, on a whim essentially. It seems to nearly universally lead to dev whiplash, poor product architecture and large amounts of technical debt. Many companies also seem to end up employing tens of people who don't actually have any role at the company-- they just show up an 'moderate' these 'ritual' meetings. I'm sorry, what exactly is the value add for having a person with no understanding of either development or product, running meetings that center around product development??? It just seems like a scam to create jobs for people with otherwise useless business degrees. I'll take however many weeks of blistering specification followed by diligently developing against hard deadlines to the insanity of rolling technical debt and borderline abusive micromanagement that agile methods all but enforce. /rant

simonbarker87 5y ago
Ahhhh, I couldn’t have put this better myself. Agile is forcing devs to change how they work to solve a problem caused by poor product and business management and all the problems it creates are swept under the rug as “technical debt”
lbriner 5y ago
It makes a lot of sense, which is why a lot of people follow it. Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid. You are portraying a poorly run implementation of agile as the only way and then destroying it. We call it a straw-man. * My development team are rarely interuppted with customer meetings * The meetings we have will always have outcomes, even if those are high-level "would this be possible?" * Everything is not expected to be done "just-in-time" "on a whim", it is simply a case of allowing the highest priorities to be looked into in much shorter cycles. * "Dev whiplash". Nope, not here. Poor architecture and tech debt? I haven't seen any more in the agile projects I have worked on compared to old waterfall projects. * Tens of people who don't have any role. Nope * Non-dev/product running meetings? Nope. Shouldn't happen and if it does, it's nothing to do with agile (or waterfall!) * Borderline abusive?
- nautilius 5y ago
  I'm sure "It makes a lot of sense, which is why a lot of people follow it. Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid." is exactly the comment that agile proponents heard when suggesting that waterfall may not be the right thing. (not arguing for one or the other, just pointing out that this argument does not mean anything).
- g051051 5y ago
  > Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid. Agile and scrum have now been around long enough that large numbers of devs have never known anything else. So yes, they don't realize they're doing something stupid.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  > You are portraying a poorly run implementation of agile as the only way and then destroying it. We call it a straw-man. Every time there's any criticism of agile, people inevitably show up and say "well, you're just doing it wrong". Maybe there's an issue with the methodology if it's so easy to get wrong, and happens so frequently? > Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid. If you read any thread on agile, I think plenty of people know they're doing something stupid...
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I've seen it done well, so it can be done. Plenty of people have seen waterfall done badly. Maybe it's so easy to get software development wrong. It's not just agile.
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g051051 5y ago
> In my few years working as a dev, I am absolutely convinced that scrum and agile are the worst possible development practices you can have from the perspective of a developer, even though they are sold as 'developer centric' or that seems to be the impression a lot of people have at least. 33 years for me, and Agile is by far the worst thing to happen to software development (and developers) that I've seen. That, and open-plan offices.
gherkinnn 5y ago
Scrum and Agile (note: capitalised) can be very painful. Badly moderated "scrum days" are a time sink. Two rounds of planning in order to start a sprint are common. Hours spent grooming infinite backlogs. An entire class of bullshit jobs is created. And all of your work is modelled on a five-year Gantt chart, effectively rendering it waterfall with more meetings. But it is not inherently so. It can be quite simple. It can be bloated. It's usually somewhere in the middle. At the very least, since Scrum being a thing, continuous integration, integrated teams, and simplified version control flows became a thing, since every sprint is "a releasable increment". While every waterfall project I ever worked on (granted, at the beginning of my career) felt like it was inherently shite. A cascade of dependencies. This means that every delay has a cascading effect on the duration entire project. This means that early actions are next to immutable later on. You're pulling requirements out of your arse because you have nothing concrete to validate them against. You only know if it works towards the very end. And until then, the product is unreleasable. And I guarantee you, requirements will change. Corona happens. A CTO quits and the new one wants something else. Dotnet core is released and now you're looking at that upgrade. You learn something new but you can't adapt. Ultimately, bad orgs fester bad methods build bad products. But please don't pretend to know everything upfront because you don't.

simonbarker87 5y ago

Ahhhh, I couldn’t have put this better myself. Agile is forcing devs to change how they work to solve a problem caused by poor product and business management and all the problems it creates are swept under the rug as “technical debt”

lbriner 5y ago

It makes a lot of sense, which is why a lot of people follow it. Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid. You are portraying a poorly run implementation of agile as the only way and then destroying it. We call it a straw-man. * My development team are rarely interuppted with customer meetings * The meetings we have will always have outcomes, even if those are high-level "would this be possible?" * Everything is not expected to be done "just-in-time" "on a whim", it is simply a case of allowing the highest priorities to be looked into in much shorter cycles. * "Dev whiplash". Nope, not here. Poor architecture and tech debt? I haven't seen any more in the agile projects I have worked on compared to old waterfall projects. * Tens of people who don't have any role. Nope * Non-dev/product running meetings? Nope. Shouldn't happen and if it does, it's nothing to do with agile (or waterfall!) * Borderline abusive?

nautilius 5y ago
I'm sure "It makes a lot of sense, which is why a lot of people follow it. Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid." is exactly the comment that agile proponents heard when suggesting that waterfall may not be the right thing. (not arguing for one or the other, just pointing out that this argument does not mean anything).
g051051 5y ago
> Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid. Agile and scrum have now been around long enough that large numbers of devs have never known anything else. So yes, they don't realize they're doing something stupid.
Trasmatta 5y ago
> You are portraying a poorly run implementation of agile as the only way and then destroying it. We call it a straw-man. Every time there's any criticism of agile, people inevitably show up and say "well, you're just doing it wrong". Maybe there's an issue with the methodology if it's so easy to get wrong, and happens so frequently? > Your comment is implying that somehow 1000s of people around the world don't realise they are doing something stupid. If you read any thread on agile, I think plenty of people know they're doing something stupid...
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  I've seen it done well, so it can be done. Plenty of people have seen waterfall done badly. Maybe it's so easy to get software development wrong. It's not just agile.
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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g051051 5y ago

> In my few years working as a dev, I am absolutely convinced that scrum and agile are the worst possible development practices you can have from the perspective of a developer, even though they are sold as 'developer centric' or that seems to be the impression a lot of people have at least. 33 years for me, and Agile is by far the worst thing to happen to software development (and developers) that I've seen. That, and open-plan offices.

gherkinnn 5y ago

Scrum and Agile (note: capitalised) can be very painful. Badly moderated "scrum days" are a time sink. Two rounds of planning in order to start a sprint are common. Hours spent grooming infinite backlogs. An entire class of bullshit jobs is created. And all of your work is modelled on a five-year Gantt chart, effectively rendering it waterfall with more meetings. But it is not inherently so. It can be quite simple. It can be bloated. It's usually somewhere in the middle. At the very least, since Scrum being a thing, continuous integration, integrated teams, and simplified version control flows became a thing, since every sprint is "a releasable increment". While every waterfall project I ever worked on (granted, at the beginning of my career) felt like it was inherently shite. A cascade of dependencies. This means that every delay has a cascading effect on the duration entire project. This means that early actions are next to immutable later on. You're pulling requirements out of your arse because you have nothing concrete to validate them against. You only know if it works towards the very end. And until then, the product is unreleasable. And I guarantee you, requirements will change. Corona happens. A CTO quits and the new one wants something else. Dotnet core is released and now you're looking at that upgrade. You learn something new but you can't adapt. Ultimately, bad orgs fester bad methods build bad products. But please don't pretend to know everything upfront because you don't.