3 ms·

I guess it depends where you worked. I certainly don't claim it was ubiquitous, but I personally saw it at a start up and a small software house. Also govern

I guess it depends where you worked. I certainly don't claim it was ubiquitous, but I personally saw it at a start up and a small software house. Also government, for sure!

sgt101 5y ago
I saw it at a local council (serving ~300k people) & a small gas (as in methane delivery) company as well as at a very large telco and in government/defence. It may not have been ubiquitous but it was definitely everywhere I worked.
- eesmith 5y ago
  Yes, "Rapid Development" lists a dozen or more approaches, including iterative prototyping and (modified) waterfall, with pros and cons of each one. My issue with the standard Agile story repeated here is the lack of any mention of pre-Agile approaches other than waterfall. Take: "Rather than clearing the way for software developers to build, waterfall gummed up the works with binders of paperwork and endless meetings." Why is there no mention of any other approach? We can easily point to the Macintosh project, which took 5 years (1979 to 1984). Yet, no waterfall there. Or, take a closer look at: "Peter Varhol, a technology industry consultant, estimates that in the early 1990s, the average application took three years to develop, from idea to finished product." (That's shorter than the Macintosh project.) What does that mean? Which industry? What kind of applications? Clearly a lot of "log cabin" PC applications are excluded from that list - just think of all the DB2 and VB applications people wrote in that era. And video games.
jghn 5y ago
In the late 90s/early 00s I worked at two large tech companies that at the time were household names. Granted one no longer exists and neither are what that phrase would evoke today. In neither case did we do waterfall as people describe it. If anything it was even less process than agile. Sure the gantt charts existed, and sure at a high level things had been drawn out. But in the boots on the ground teams things were a lot more ad hoc. The biggest difference I see from that experience today was that individual developers were handed larger pieces that'd take weeks or more, and had a lot more freedom of action. Not sure I'd call it better or worse to common scrum setups, but likely a bit of both.
- MattPalmer1086 5y ago
  For me too in the 90s it was a lot more ad hoc, with a higher degree of trust in the developers. I think many people found software quite mysterious. You had to let the wizards perform their strange magic ;) I think what agile gives us over that world is better feedback cycles.

I guess it depends where you worked. I certainly don't claim it was ubiquitous, but I personally saw it at a start up and a small software house. Also government, for sure!

sgt101 5y ago

I saw it at a local council (serving ~300k people) & a small gas (as in methane delivery) company as well as at a very large telco and in government/defence. It may not have been ubiquitous but it was definitely everywhere I worked.

eesmith 5y ago
Yes, "Rapid Development" lists a dozen or more approaches, including iterative prototyping and (modified) waterfall, with pros and cons of each one. My issue with the standard Agile story repeated here is the lack of any mention of pre-Agile approaches other than waterfall. Take: "Rather than clearing the way for software developers to build, waterfall gummed up the works with binders of paperwork and endless meetings." Why is there no mention of any other approach? We can easily point to the Macintosh project, which took 5 years (1979 to 1984). Yet, no waterfall there. Or, take a closer look at: "Peter Varhol, a technology industry consultant, estimates that in the early 1990s, the average application took three years to develop, from idea to finished product." (That's shorter than the Macintosh project.) What does that mean? Which industry? What kind of applications? Clearly a lot of "log cabin" PC applications are excluded from that list - just think of all the DB2 and VB applications people wrote in that era. And video games.

jghn 5y ago

In the late 90s/early 00s I worked at two large tech companies that at the time were household names. Granted one no longer exists and neither are what that phrase would evoke today. In neither case did we do waterfall as people describe it. If anything it was even less process than agile. Sure the gantt charts existed, and sure at a high level things had been drawn out. But in the boots on the ground teams things were a lot more ad hoc. The biggest difference I see from that experience today was that individual developers were handed larger pieces that'd take weeks or more, and had a lot more freedom of action. Not sure I'd call it better or worse to common scrum setups, but likely a bit of both.

MattPalmer1086 5y ago
For me too in the 90s it was a lot more ad hoc, with a higher degree of trust in the developers. I think many people found software quite mysterious. You had to let the wizards perform their strange magic ;) I think what agile gives us over that world is better feedback cycles.