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> The process which produces most software the world uses seems almost intentionally designed to throw both those conclusions to the curb. Scrum?

robertlagrant 2y ago
Scrum can deliver any sort of feature for whatever reason. Not because it's amazing; just because it doesn't have an opinion on what features are good. I read this more as purely data-driven product decisions, or three years of UX research before we get building, those sorts of approaches.
015a 2y ago
Eh, not really scrum/agile. These are IMO bad ways to build software, especially when taken to the dictionary-definition extreme of the process, but they're not what I'm talking about. I'm more-so referencing e.g. Amazonian Data-Driven Decision Making. That the nature of this kind of process puts taste behind data, even erroneous interpretations of data or incomplete data, data is data and data is king; organizations quickly lose any sense of taste they may have had as decision making is predominated by data analysis. This process looks down on someone finding data to support a conclusion they want to reach, but in reality this is the only way to build great software: Starting with good taste, and supporting that taste with data, metrics, and experimentation. Cherry-picking is fantastic; instead we larp scientists. To a similar degree, I'm also referencing over-specialization in enterprise companies. The classic Office Space bit: "We don't let the engineers talk to customers". Computers give us an effectively-infinite second-brain and effectively-infinite automation capability, if used correctly. This idea that we need a multi-disciplinary team of a dozen people to build anything, each person holding one small piece of the puzzle like a precious gem, is antiquated; it predictably leads to the vast, vast majority of all billable person-hours being spent on self-inflicted problems and context transfer. At minimum, many extremely successful companies organize themselves around multi-disciplinary individuals & vertical teams, instead of specialized individuals and horizontal teams; this is great. But, as we live through the birth of AI rather quickly gaining many of the capabilities of these specialized individuals, I think we'll inevitably see the most profitable and productive companies and teams get smaller and smaller.

robertlagrant 2y ago

Scrum can deliver any sort of feature for whatever reason. Not because it's amazing; just because it doesn't have an opinion on what features are good. I read this more as purely data-driven product decisions, or three years of UX research before we get building, those sorts of approaches.

015a 2y ago

Eh, not really scrum/agile. These are IMO bad ways to build software, especially when taken to the dictionary-definition extreme of the process, but they're not what I'm talking about. I'm more-so referencing e.g. Amazonian Data-Driven Decision Making. That the nature of this kind of process puts taste behind data, even erroneous interpretations of data or incomplete data, data is data and data is king; organizations quickly lose any sense of taste they may have had as decision making is predominated by data analysis. This process looks down on someone finding data to support a conclusion they want to reach, but in reality this is the only way to build great software: Starting with good taste, and supporting that taste with data, metrics, and experimentation. Cherry-picking is fantastic; instead we larp scientists. To a similar degree, I'm also referencing over-specialization in enterprise companies. The classic Office Space bit: "We don't let the engineers talk to customers". Computers give us an effectively-infinite second-brain and effectively-infinite automation capability, if used correctly. This idea that we need a multi-disciplinary team of a dozen people to build anything, each person holding one small piece of the puzzle like a precious gem, is antiquated; it predictably leads to the vast, vast majority of all billable person-hours being spent on self-inflicted problems and context transfer. At minimum, many extremely successful companies organize themselves around multi-disciplinary individuals & vertical teams, instead of specialized individuals and horizontal teams; this is great. But, as we live through the birth of AI rather quickly gaining many of the capabilities of these specialized individuals, I think we'll inevitably see the most profitable and productive companies and teams get smaller and smaller.