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Your bullet points may (or may not) be fine for commercial software. If you're working on anything governed by the US Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), th
by OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
Your bullet points may (or may not) be fine for commercial software. If you're working on anything governed by the US Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), they are a minefield.
- Process compliance is usually baked into the contract. If the contractor stipulates to complying with a process, especially a government process, then it had better be followed and documented
- Documentation is not optional. People move on, get fired, and/or die. Because the s/w works today, it may not tomorrow when MS, Redhat, or whomever push patches
- "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation": Once the contract is in place, it is in place. Customers will _always_ try to add scope and eventually try to direct the individual performers. If you're Firm Fixed Price, you are dead in the water. If you are Cost Plus Fixed Fee (CPFF), you will dilute your profit when you inevitably overrun.
-- Aside: CPFF means the fee is fixed at contract start. If you overrun you may get your costs but the fee stays the same.
And so on.
An even bigger problem is when Lean/Agile gets glommed on to hardware efforts where you can't simply issue a patch every 30 minutes and where you can't have the customer in your day-to-day shorts.
- psunavy03 3y agoAnd yet the government is starting to realize that the FARs need a major overhaul if the DOD is to have a prayer of staying competitive in the 21st Century. You're not describing a critique of Agile so much as you're describing why the government sucks out loud at software.
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoI'll let you fly the plane whose software is written without requirements, updated on the fly, and released without regression testing.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoThis characterisation of Agile methodologies is exactly what I’d expect if someone has spent their career in the US govt contracting machine for long enough to have been convinced that it is a remotely good idea.
- psunavy03 3y agoNice strawman. Now read this paper on how Saab Aerospace used Scrum@Scale. https://www.scruminc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Release-version_Owning-the-Sky-with-Agile.pdf https://www.scruminc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Release-...
- OldGuyInTheClub 3y agoSo, they don't talk to the direct customer (the Product Owner is a proxy), they do the parts of Scrum that they want to do, and there is no proof whatsoever offered. No graphs, no data, no circles and arrows. It sounds like an article written for a Scrum consulting blog which, whaddya whaddaya, it is. Thanks for the chuckle. Got some new terms to add to our Bullshit Bingo cards.
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