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The better critique is from one of the authors of the agile manifesto, who recommends a shift in language: > I don’t think anyone could object to a ban on the
by h0l0cube 3y ago
The better critique is from one of the authors of the agile manifesto, who recommends a shift in language:
> I don’t think anyone could object to a ban on the word when it is used as a noun. That’s just plain wrong. “Do Agile Right” and “Agile for Dummies” are just two of the innumerable attacks on the English language featuring the word. They are meaningless. Agile is not a noun, it’s an adjective, and it must qualify something else. “Do Agile Right” is like saying “Do Orange Right.”
> But, beyond the grammar problem, there’s a bigger issue. Once the Manifesto became popular, the word agile became a magnet for anyone with points to espouse, hours to bill, or products to sell. It became a marketing term, coopted to improve sales in the same way that words such as eco and natural are. A word that is abused in this way becomes useless—it stops having meaning as it transitions into a brand.
...
> Let’s develop with agility
> You aren’t an agile programmer—you’re a programmer who programs with agility.
> You don’t work on an agile team—your team exhibits agility.
> You don’t use agile tools—you use tools that enhance your agility.
https://pragdave.me/thoughts/active/2014-03-04-time-to-kill-agile.html https://pragdave.me/thoughts/active/2014-03-04-time-to-kill-...
- steveBK123 3y agoPrecisely. I worked in a dev org with under 100 devs/dev managers, which had 0 budget for project managers, QA, (or a DR plan for that matter) but did have budget for no less than an entire team of 3 fulltime "agile" coaches/consultants for upwards of 4 years or more. The word has been stolen by the worst charlatans who are enriching themselves on the back of our industry.
- rightbyte 3y agoYe why is this. How can it be so easy for management to get permission to hire a Scrum Lord but not a designated QA dev? Like, in big projects I would like one QA for every 5 programmers to keep us from building backwards.
- steveBK123 3y agoPrecisely. Incentives. CTO can pitch "going agile" and how its the latest & greatest, and they are going to get more output out of the dev org more quickly. "Hiring some QA" is not nearly as sexy.
- rightbyte 3y agoWhich is funny since the QAs would actually pay their wages in savings (to some number of QA devs) or increase speed while e.g. a Scrum master in my experience increases admin burden for the devs.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y agoIn my experience management has a lot of anxiety over long term planning for software teams. What are we going to get built by when? Are we focusing on the right things? How do I keep things from falling apart because one key team member leaves? Scrum et all offer what looks like systematic answers to these understandable concerns.
- steveBK123 3y agoYes but near-zero tech management / stakeholders pay any attention to the metrics that come out of say, Jira which would help them understand that. So you end up spinning up a dozen different manual reports at different granularity levels that take all Friday afternoon to do.. mostly in excel/outlook, and.. so again its just manual grind work and qualitative fluff.