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I Can't agree more. I successfully applied agile ONCE during my 6 year tenure at a fortune 100. When approached with the question of what I thought was needed

by xarien 15y ago

I Can't agree more. I successfully applied agile ONCE during my 6 year tenure at a fortune 100. When approached with the question of what I thought was needed to make agile work, my reply was simple: "start with a good team who can handle it." That advice was of course tossed aside as corporations (especially middle managers) whose primary concern is the ability to shift resources cannot fathom the notion that agile starts with the individuals who compose the team. The sad truth of it was that there very few individuals who are actually capable of being "agile" after being subject to heavy handed processes for years.

endersshadow 15y ago
From being on a few agile projects at Fortune 100s, I can attest to this. I once worked in parallel with another agile team that was doing a separate but integrated portion of an entire solution (it was a bunch of apps under one umbrella/initiative). At the risk of tooting my own horn, the other team was disbanded after three months without progress. The inherent problem that I saw was how those companies treat developers. I'm a consultant, so I was able to do the projects and move on, but it's clear that the companies look at developers as commodities and cannot fathom why somebody who says they can write code is not equal to another person who can write code. After all, aren't all accountants the same? (They're really not.) Regardless of whatever process you throw at these large companies, if you have a mediocre staff, expect mediocre results.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  Regardless of whatever process you throw at these large companies, if you have a mediocre staff, expect mediocre results. I agree about staff, but I also think that mindset is a huge component. There are organizations out there that consider software to be a necessary evil, something that they have to do in order to do the real stuff that needs to get done. Other organizations consider software development to be a strategic advantage. Something that they can do more quickly or more effectively to make the organization succeed. If you're at a "necessary evil" organization, neither talent nor methodology will save you.

by xarien 15y ago

endersshadow 15y ago

From being on a few agile projects at Fortune 100s, I can attest to this. I once worked in parallel with another agile team that was doing a separate but integrated portion of an entire solution (it was a bunch of apps under one umbrella/initiative). At the risk of tooting my own horn, the other team was disbanded after three months without progress. The inherent problem that I saw was how those companies treat developers. I'm a consultant, so I was able to do the projects and move on, but it's clear that the companies look at developers as commodities and cannot fathom why somebody who says they can write code is not equal to another person who can write code. After all, aren't all accountants the same? (They're really not.) Regardless of whatever process you throw at these large companies, if you have a mediocre staff, expect mediocre results.

MartinCron 15y ago
Regardless of whatever process you throw at these large companies, if you have a mediocre staff, expect mediocre results. I agree about staff, but I also think that mindset is a huge component. There are organizations out there that consider software to be a necessary evil, something that they have to do in order to do the real stuff that needs to get done. Other organizations consider software development to be a strategic advantage. Something that they can do more quickly or more effectively to make the organization succeed. If you're at a "necessary evil" organization, neither talent nor methodology will save you.