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I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliv

I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliver.

protonbob 4y ago
Well, if you are doing it correctly, you are supposed to make a sprint goal of a deliverable that has value.
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
Well, waterfall used to not deliver anything at all. Not delivering anything is pretty useless.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Well, waterfall used to not deliver anything at all. Not delivering anything is pretty useless. That's pretty much untrue; had this project been a waterfall project then: a) The devs would not have gotten paid until they hit particular milestones, b) The deliverables would have been scoped upfront, c) The agency would have eaten the cost of developing useless things, not the customer. Because this was obviously an agile/Agile project: a) The payment milestones were not specified upfront, b) The devliverables remained unscoped until feedback was needed (which was well into the development phase), c) The client eats the cost of developers time, whether or not milestones are hit.
lmm 4y ago
> I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. They probably said the word "agile" a lot and then continued doing something else, that seems to be the usual pattern. > Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliver. Which is why it's the product owner's responsibility to prioritise.
- josefx 4y ago
  > Which is why it's the product owner's responsibility to prioritise. The company didn't seem to have issues prioritizing the authors tasks into no mans land. So they seem to have that part down great already. However I find the consistent two week deliveries early on a bit disturbing, in my experience two weeks is exactly one sprint and fixing deliverables to that time window means that you can't really do any agile planing with it, your team just has to accept that this work has to be done and can't give random work that seems to pop up every now and then the attention it deserves. To be really agile and allow your sprint planing to reflect that you shouldn't promise anything in time spans less than two months.
  - lmm 4y ago
    The whole point of agile is that you deliver something every two weeks. Whatever it is you're suggesting, it's not agile.
    - josefx 4y ago
      Delivering "something" and delivering specific items at a fixed rate are different things.
      - lmm 4y ago
        Agile never promised to do the latter (and I've never seen a methodology that succeded at it in a way that was useful in practice).
chiefalchemist 4y ago
> I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. Probably not. Larger relatively successful design / marketing agencies are - based on my experience - poorly run, poorly managed, and poorly led. This gets exasperated by high turn-over (read: good people leave, dead weight stays behind). Training, etc.? Not a priority. Revenue, it's all about revenue. They're "creatives", not business problem-solver types and presume mess and excessive friction are unavoidable.
ratww 4y ago
Even if they're using agile, it's up to the customer to ask for deliverables that they care about if they want them. Of course it would be much better if the agency were honest, but if for seven months the deliverables were only "promises", then it's definitely not agile...

I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliver.

protonbob 4y ago

Well, if you are doing it correctly, you are supposed to make a sprint goal of a deliverable that has value.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago

Well, waterfall used to not deliver anything at all. Not delivering anything is pretty useless.

lelanthran 4y ago
> Well, waterfall used to not deliver anything at all. Not delivering anything is pretty useless. That's pretty much untrue; had this project been a waterfall project then: a) The devs would not have gotten paid until they hit particular milestones, b) The deliverables would have been scoped upfront, c) The agency would have eaten the cost of developing useless things, not the customer. Because this was obviously an agile/Agile project: a) The payment milestones were not specified upfront, b) The devliverables remained unscoped until feedback was needed (which was well into the development phase), c) The client eats the cost of developers time, whether or not milestones are hit.

lmm 4y ago

> I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. They probably said the word "agile" a lot and then continued doing something else, that seems to be the usual pattern. > Agile is not a guarantee of deliverables you care about. There is a lot of useless stuff you can deliver. Which is why it's the product owner's responsibility to prioritise.

josefx 4y ago
> Which is why it's the product owner's responsibility to prioritise. The company didn't seem to have issues prioritizing the authors tasks into no mans land. So they seem to have that part down great already. However I find the consistent two week deliveries early on a bit disturbing, in my experience two weeks is exactly one sprint and fixing deliverables to that time window means that you can't really do any agile planing with it, your team just has to accept that this work has to be done and can't give random work that seems to pop up every now and then the attention it deserves. To be really agile and allow your sprint planing to reflect that you shouldn't promise anything in time spans less than two months.
- lmm 4y ago
  The whole point of agile is that you deliver something every two weeks. Whatever it is you're suggesting, it's not agile.
  - josefx 4y ago
    Delivering "something" and delivering specific items at a fixed rate are different things.
    - lmm 4y ago
      Agile never promised to do the latter (and I've never seen a methodology that succeded at it in a way that was useful in practice).

chiefalchemist 4y ago

> I'd bet you a large sum of money this agency used Agile. Probably not. Larger relatively successful design / marketing agencies are - based on my experience - poorly run, poorly managed, and poorly led. This gets exasperated by high turn-over (read: good people leave, dead weight stays behind). Training, etc.? Not a priority. Revenue, it's all about revenue. They're "creatives", not business problem-solver types and presume mess and excessive friction are unavoidable.

ratww 4y ago

Even if they're using agile, it's up to the customer to ask for deliverables that they care about if they want them. Of course it would be much better if the agency were honest, but if for seven months the deliverables were only "promises", then it's definitely not agile...