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> agile has killed the happiness...meetings...rituals...meta-work...not actual productivity. All of that isn't actual agile. It's Fauxgile and has nothing to
by mpweiher 4y ago
> agile has killed the happiness...meetings...rituals...meta-work...not actual productivity.
All of that isn't actual agile. It's Fauxgile and has nothing to do with what agile is about, which is about removing impediments to productivity, removing meetings (why were there standups? Because they shouldn't exist in the first place, and if you absolutely positively can't avoid them then at least make them as short as possible by making everyone as uncomfortable as they should be) and laser-focusing on actual productivity.
> (If agile is done well though it can be amazing but that's another topic to me)
Yes. I would phrase it as: if agile is actually done.
- mindcrime 4y agoCan't upvote this enough times. Time and time again you see this: people say "I hate agile because of X, Y and Z" where X, Y, and Z - at best - are orthogonal to the idea of Agile, and at worst (and perhaps even "ordinarily") are complete anathema to the spirit of Agile. Sorry, but anybody who thinks Agile is about velocity, story points, planning poker, standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming, etc. has been sold a bill of goods. Now that's not to say that those things don't have (some) value. But they aren't "the thing" about Agile. Not even close.
- peteradio 4y agoBut if you are joining an Agile shop what do you get on average?
- mpweiher 4y agoFauxgile.
- roundandround 4y agoAnd every time communism meets the real world we call the required modifications state capitalism.
- lazyasciiart 4y agoI thought it was called the welfare state, or social democracy.
- ajmurmann 4y agoScrum
- fijiaarone 4y agoJira
- selestify 4y agoWhat is actually Agile then, and how does one actually practice it?
- ajmurmann 4y agoagilemanifesto.org Constant reflection and drive towards faster feedback. XP or if I squint Scrum can be a starting point, but you gotta adapt to the individuals on the team and the characteristics of the type of problem you are solving.
- lr4444lr 4y agoIt's a methodology that makes software more resilient to the changing needs of the business. Anything that violates the 12 canonical principles[0] should be thrown out - and this has to be determined by each org. individually. [0] https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
- mindcrime 4y ago/u/lr4444lr and /u/ajmurmann nailed it. "Agile" is just what the Agile Manifesto says. Strictly speaking, "Agile" in and of itself isn't even a methodology - it's just a set of principles, to which a number of concrete methodologies claim some association. They differ in the degree to which they faithfully represent the spirit of the manifesto. So really, you're never "doing Agile". You're "doing $X" where $X can be Scrum, XP, Crystal, AgileUP, SAFe, or whatever. At most companies what you get, in my experience, is a bastardized version of Scrum cobbled together by somebody who has never actually developed software, took a couple of Scrum classes (maybe), paid too much money for some "help" from some "Agile coaches", and is hoping some of the resulting shit will stick to the wall. FWIW, I've actually had the pleasure of working at company that did Scrum and really did it well, and it was honestly a great experience. Actual Scrum, as documented in the Scrum Guide, isn't bad. The problem is when people take base Scrum and start tacking on additional shit (see: "agile coaches" and "agile consultants") and wind up with a bureaucratic / kafka-esque tarpit of interminable meetings, ceremonies, and artifacts. In other words, pretty much exactly what the Agile Manifesto stood against in the first place.
- 4y ago
- lelanthran 4y ago> Sorry, but anybody who thinks Agile is about velocity, story points, planning poker, standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming, etc. has been sold a bill of goods. Now that's not to say that those things don't have (some) value. Spot on. You and parent have hit the two points that matter: 1. Agile is about removing impediments to productivity 2. velocity, story points, planning poker, standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming, etc are all, in some way, impediments to productivity (even if they do have some value). I think the real reason you cannot have real agile is because businesses don't run in a way that is compatible with agile, so over time all processes within a business will evolve to match how the business itself functions.
- garethrowlands 4y agoStrong agree. Except it's not even really about productivity, it's about outcomes. The productivity is only important insofar as it achieves the outcomes. The ideal agile process would have the team on the golf course or in the spa but still changing the world (any suggestions on achieving this, gratefully accepted, as always).
- mindcrime 4y agoI think the real reason you cannot have real agile is because businesses don't run in a way that is compatible with agile, so over time all processes within a business will evolve to match how the business itself functions. Sadly, I think you are correct. It's very hard, at best, to make "the business" operate in a way that's truly compatible with the agile approach on the tech side. :-( I won't say it's impossible, but it's definitely not easy.
- t43562 4y agoYes, the business leadership almost always put an impossible waterfall approach ontop - they don't adapt to change at all well and are not really leading. For me the value in Agile is what we end up NOT doing - we never get to that shit because in the end it's not that important. So we never waste time doing it.
- jimbomins 4y ago"removing impediments" - just sounds like good managers in any process. Bad managers often are an impediment.
- barrenko 4y agoAgile is like socialism at times.
- LAC-Tech 4y agoBad idea in the first place, and when implemented horrifying beyond belief?
- dismalpedigree 4y agoAgile is like capitalism at times.
- maerF0x0 4y ago> Yes. I would phrase it as: if agile is actually done. Agile was the best of times, Agile was the worst of times, Agile was the age of wisdom, Agile was the age of foolishness, Agile was the epoch of belief, Agile was the epoch of incredulity, Agile was the season of light, Agile was the season of darkness, Agile was the spring of hope, Agile was the winter of despair. -- Paraphrasing Charles Dickens
- drewcoo 4y agoI can't tell whether that's supposed to be upper-case or lower-case agile.
- RussianCow 4y agoI'm not sure what this means.
- flyingfences 4y ago"'Real' socialism hasn't been tried, so you can't say it doesn't work."
- int_19h 4y agoIt has been tried, though, and it works fine in e.g. Chiapas. Granted, that's not an industrialized and mostly urban society, but not everything has to be one.
- LAC-Tech 4y agoI've read the original manifesto and principles, and quite frankly I'm not that impressed with them either. Some of the principles are actively harmful, like welcoming changing requirements late in the process.
- SAI_Peregrinus 4y agoYep. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" OK, not terrible, but why not "interactions and tools over individuals and processes"? De-emphasize individual's egos and ritualized processes, focus on the things that get work done and communication between entities. "Working software over comprehensive documentation" Tends to make very frustrating-to-use software, because it's never fully working and has minimal documentation. "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation" Fine. You'll still need a contract, but it's definitely important have a collaborative rather than adversarial relationship with customers. "Responding to change over following a plan" Tends to make sense when gathering requirements, turns into a horrible idea later on in a project. Also fails utterly when working with something like a factory (making a hardware product with embedded software). If your entire view of software is web apps, this one seems like a good idea. If you're making something with a manufacturing deadline, it's a recipe for disaster.
- jacobr1 4y ago> Working software over comprehensive documentation This means something a little different. It wasn't talking about "end-user" documentation. Rather, it meant "product specifications." Do you need to design the system upfront in UML before you start writing code? You may still need something like a whiteboard sketch or something similar, but that wouldn't be "comprehensive."
- jacobr1 4y ago> "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation" The distinction is more about how granular you need things. Do you need to negotiate every piece of business-logic and get signoffs on mockups up-front, and in the case of paying customer, rather than internal stakeholder potentially including placing them into a legal SOW? Or can you just agree to a bullet-list of high level functionality, and then establish a working arrangement to receive feedback and refinement. Build and MVP and get some use, then make it better. Likely the initial understanding of the requirements was flawed anyway, so being reactive to the change, with buy-in from the customer will be a better plan for success. But yeah, this might not work with physical products.
- thwawawa1234 4y agoAgile is made up. The vast majority of places “do it wrong”. Coaches come in and make things even worse, with even less understanding. Saying “they are doing it wrong” and having nothing change isn’t doing anything, and it’s not really a great point. (Not specifically calling you out I just hear this all the time) “Fauxagile” *is* agile, because thats what the majority of places in reality do. “Agile” needs a complete rebrand.
- madeofpalk 4y agoProductive teams understand that any "way of working" is just a means to an end, and that good teams find a way to work that suits them (and their situation).
- ajmurmann 4y ago"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" as the Agile Manifesto would call it. Quite different from having a certified scrum master
- fijiaarone 4y agoCertified Scrum Masters are individuals who need jobs.
- xigoi 4y agoThen they should get a different job.
- goodpoint 4y ago“Agile” needs to stop existing.
- JakeAl 4y agoAgile just means making it up as you go when you have people who don't have the knowledge or experience to define first exactly what is required. If more programmers became managers and could work with the stakeholders, most specifically the clients that are ultimately paying their salaries then there would be fewer problems with waterfall. My experience is that if programmers would read the design document written by people who are knowledgeable instead of wanting to build it on the fly there would be no need for agile (assuming experienced people are writing the design documents. After ~1998-2000 it seems like marketing and sales were the ones that ended up doing that despite having no education or experience in designing software interfaces let alone programming). But that's just my experience, and I learned early on the first thing you do is read the manual and if it doesn't answer all the questions then ask and re-write the manual yourself before doing any budgeting or coding. Instead we got agile, which turned into make it up as you go through constant sprints/iterations and meetings as you design and build it rather than on paper. As comic Dave Smith said, if you say it works on paper but doesn't in practice then it doesn't work on paper either.
- gardenhedge 4y agoHow do you pronounce Fauxgile? I've heard of "Fragile" before.