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Constructions remains a terrible analogy for software development, as it always has been.
by gilbetron 3y ago
Constructions remains a terrible analogy for software development, as it always has been.
- emodendroket 3y agoWould you agree to pay for any service where not even an estimate of the price could be given? I guess healthcare is the only example I can think of where anyone consents to that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- davemp 3y agoEstimates you get are what the estimator thinks you will pay (mostly) not how much it costs them. Prices in the real world are barely linked to costs. Budget risks are bundled in markets with high variance.
- emodendroket 3y agoEven to the extent that is true it doesn’t change my argument at all.
- davemp 3y agoMaybe I don't see the relevance of your question then. Software developers are not negotiating fixed price contracts with their project managers every two weeks. Just how toxic such a situation would be should be obvious. Managers need to understand the context of the job and determine if they're satisfied with the productivity of their employees. Agile is a development process not a contract pricing strategy. If anything proponents of "Agile" would be more hesitant to quote you a firm fixed price contract than "Waterfall" teams.
- emodendroket 3y agoThey don’t have to hire you every two weeks but they are paying for you and do have to decide how to allocate your time and plan various projects with interlocking dependencies. How can they do that without even a rough idea of how many people it takes for how long to accomplish anything? You are, in effect, still asking them to write you a blank check to accomplish something when they might want to change gears if apprised of how difficult it is.
- davemp 3y ago> How can they do that without even a rough idea of how many people it takes for how long to accomplish anything? This is not exclusive to scrum.
- emodendroket 3y agoIf you go way back up in this thread the reason given for Scrum being bad is it features estimation, which is useless because it's inaccurate, so telling me that systems other than Scrum feature estimation is not a rebuttal.
- davemp 3y agoThis is not really a discussion in good faith. > the reason given for Scrum being bad is it features estimation This seems like a strawman and not at all what I was picking up from further up the thread. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- emodendroket 3y agoCan you tell me how I was supposed to interpret “it is impossible to do good estimation” as a criticism of Scrum, then?
- flappyeagle 3y agoResearch. We’re researching cures to cancer, nuclear fusion, space flight, etc. with no idea what the total cost of ownership will be. Software dev can resemble research on a smaller scale. The more interesting or complex your requirements and environment, the closer it resembles research. The original point of agile was to lean into this fact and get out of planning and predicting. Scrum culture has corrupted this goal.
- emodendroket 3y agoYeah it turns out if your object is having working software to use to make money you’re not that interested in the mysteries of theory.