10 ms·

I don't do "Agile" and never have. But every time I read or hear about Agile it's described like above. Everyone seems to hate it and it all sounds terribly ine

by dgb23 3y ago

I don't do "Agile" and never have. But every time I read or hear about Agile it's described like above. Everyone seems to hate it and it all sounds terribly inefficient and frustrating. I scratch my head... Why? Why are people still doing it? Who actually _wants_ that?

mmcdermott 3y ago
I think a lot of engineers say they want agile and they mean it in the sense of the ideals in the Agile Manifesto (https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/). There isn't a lot to complain about with those ideals. Working software, people, collaboration and flexibility are all very good things. When you look at the agile frameworks that are commonly implemented (Scrum, XP, etc.) you see that however well-intentioned they are, they seldom live up to those ideals. Do we care about working software or hitting burn down numbers? Do we care about flexibility or about keeping our iteration plans nice and clean? Do we care about collaboration or about having a paper trail to cover ourselves? Do we care about people or tickets? As agile has gone mainstream more and more experiences are bad, courtesy of Sturgeon's Law. Then you add in the fact that the bad experiences will always be amplified (after all, when things are working well they're "fine"; it's still work).
m_rpn 3y ago
We do that, especially in big companies, because management needs metrics, meetings and things like that to keep themselves occupied and relevant.
willsmith72 3y ago
What do you mean? I find the exact opposite. People are still wanting their waterfall project with an upfront design and "requirements analysis", and shocked when things run over-time with a crappy end-product. This also goes for SAFE and many implementations of scrum. What don't you like about agile? What do you use that's better?

10 ms·

I don't do "Agile" and never have. But every time I read or hear about Agile it's described like above. Everyone seems to hate it and it all sounds terribly ine

by dgb23 3y ago

mmcdermott 3y ago
I think a lot of engineers say they want agile and they mean it in the sense of the ideals in the Agile Manifesto (https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/). There isn't a lot to complain about with those ideals. Working software, people, collaboration and flexibility are all very good things. When you look at the agile frameworks that are commonly implemented (Scrum, XP, etc.) you see that however well-intentioned they are, they seldom live up to those ideals. Do we care about working software or hitting burn down numbers? Do we care about flexibility or about keeping our iteration plans nice and clean? Do we care about collaboration or about having a paper trail to cover ourselves? Do we care about people or tickets? As agile has gone mainstream more and more experiences are bad, courtesy of Sturgeon's Law. Then you add in the fact that the bad experiences will always be amplified (after all, when things are working well they're "fine"; it's still work).
m_rpn 3y ago
We do that, especially in big companies, because management needs metrics, meetings and things like that to keep themselves occupied and relevant.
willsmith72 3y ago
What do you mean? I find the exact opposite. People are still wanting their waterfall project with an upfront design and "requirements analysis", and shocked when things run over-time with a crappy end-product. This also goes for SAFE and many implementations of scrum. What don't you like about agile? What do you use that's better?