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> Agile/Scrummy Agile/FrAgile/Enterprise Fragile shoved firmly down my throat The really frustrating thing is that what's now called "Agile" devolved from "Ext

> Agile/Scrummy Agile/FrAgile/Enterprise Fragile shoved firmly down my throat The really frustrating thing is that what's now called "Agile" devolved from "Extreme Programming" (XP) which was as appropriate as it was poorly named. I first heard of it sometime around '99 or so, long after I had put up with my share of frustrations around the expectation that every programming task could be predicted ahead of time on the spot (and that every prediction was a few hours). XP, on the other hand, was a reasonable pushback against mismanagement: say what you want and then get out of the way and give them time to make incremental progress toward that goal. There were no estimates or deadlines in XP. There weren't any in the agile manifesto, either. However, what's now Orwellianly called "Agile" as "tell me right now on the spot how long it's going to take to deliver this vaguely defined piece of functionality so I can 'negotiate' it down to when I need it by"... which is exactly what XP and the agile manifesto were trying to explain was impossible.

switchbak 4y ago
I was in an XP shop in the semi early days, and it really was a grass roots counter reaction to the enterprise over the top culture of the time. In the teams I've worked on that had a good sense of the essence and spirit of agile principles, we've done extremely well. But it's always been context specific and very fluid. Where it's been a mandate from on high, where it's dogmatically enforced and people say things like "that's not Agile": it's always been a bit of a shitshow. Usually it's just window dressing on old school command and control style management. I've personally found almost all SCRUM teams I've been on to be more of the latter. Not all but close. I think fundamentally business school is just teaching a more static model than what really makes sense with modern software development, and that pervades throughout and beyond the organization. Hopefully we'll see that slowly evolve as competitive pressures punish the less adaptive ones.

switchbak 4y ago

I was in an XP shop in the semi early days, and it really was a grass roots counter reaction to the enterprise over the top culture of the time. In the teams I've worked on that had a good sense of the essence and spirit of agile principles, we've done extremely well. But it's always been context specific and very fluid. Where it's been a mandate from on high, where it's dogmatically enforced and people say things like "that's not Agile": it's always been a bit of a shitshow. Usually it's just window dressing on old school command and control style management. I've personally found almost all SCRUM teams I've been on to be more of the latter. Not all but close. I think fundamentally business school is just teaching a more static model than what really makes sense with modern software development, and that pervades throughout and beyond the organization. Hopefully we'll see that slowly evolve as competitive pressures punish the less adaptive ones.