3 ms·

I strongly agree, but winning this cultural/political war is hard. And it's an extra hard war to fight in part because of what Moxie is saying, which I appreci

I strongly agree, but winning this cultural/political war is hard. And it's an extra hard war to fight in part because of what Moxie is saying, which I appreciate. The agile style promotes a cancerous software growth. Delivery deliver deliver, all the time, features forever. It's good to be value minded, but making good long term decisions, thinking through your software and where it's headed, making long term decisions, and having artifacts and buy in for these long term plans is setting yourself up to resist the rot and decay that agile so easily lets in. Agule and books like team topologies don't really have any commitment to the software as a whole. The team has a compact to ship ship ship ship, and so does every other team. But it imagines them all as islands, with only some interdependence. I struggle to think of examples to make this clear, but good software is holistic, good software tries to slam concerns & create smoothness across joints. When agile lets software grow to be so very discombobulated, even if the corporation wants to be bottom up, the chaotic software architecture keeps engineers from seeing and springing on good ideas. Our potential as engineers is defined in sizable part by what we can understand and how well we understand the internals of our software, how well everything fits together, how legible the system is. Agile actively destroys this kernel for understanding, sacrifices the engineer's greatest leverage, for short virtue, for the reward of always be shipping. If agile hasn't so overwhelmingly become a license for teams & product to do whatever, so long as the features keep shipping, the engineers would be in a better stance to have executive will & function, be able to go out there & steer & direct; we'd deserve to be heard better. But we are kept low by the thrashing chaos that comes in the absence of thinking ahead. The technical inadequacy erodes our ability to make political/organizational progress.

pas 2y ago
It seems that you are mystifying agile as this all-powerful machine. Most corporations are mediocre, slow to change, and their software projects are just not ideal. And agile is a mindset to accept this, focus on the people, both devs and stakeholders (who fund the project, and ultimately the company that pays their salary). Probably by now it's a cliche to reference the first line of the manifesto, but... people above process, etc. Agile sets the stage, helps grease the gears, by default it doesn't keep the project "accountable". How the actual plans come out of it is up to the actual team, the leadership (where the classic fish and head olfactory law applies). Islands and cliques form naturally anyway. And in some sense it's okay, because making too big plans tends to fail. (Again, agile at best nudges folks to think about commitments, what their work items mean for the team, for other teams ... but if course the further the others the less relatable is the importance of their needs.) > we'd deserve to be heard better yes, of course. and other "bottom feeders" too (excuse my phrasing), and middle managers too ... alas corporations tend to be broken as I mentioned. And as a consequence, I found that outside our vocal minority most people develop the "if I don't care it doesn't hurt" mindset, they do want to close tickets and nothing more.
lucianbr 2y ago
> Delivery deliver deliver, all the time, features forever. This is the mindset, and a huge problem. But Agile does not cause it. (Or solve it, of course.) Money causes it. Features bring money, more than other things, most of the time. Money in the short term. And few managers seem to care about the long term. If anything, Agile is liked by managers because it claims to allow building features non-stop.

pas 2y ago

It seems that you are mystifying agile as this all-powerful machine. Most corporations are mediocre, slow to change, and their software projects are just not ideal. And agile is a mindset to accept this, focus on the people, both devs and stakeholders (who fund the project, and ultimately the company that pays their salary). Probably by now it's a cliche to reference the first line of the manifesto, but... people above process, etc. Agile sets the stage, helps grease the gears, by default it doesn't keep the project "accountable". How the actual plans come out of it is up to the actual team, the leadership (where the classic fish and head olfactory law applies). Islands and cliques form naturally anyway. And in some sense it's okay, because making too big plans tends to fail. (Again, agile at best nudges folks to think about commitments, what their work items mean for the team, for other teams ... but if course the further the others the less relatable is the importance of their needs.) > we'd deserve to be heard better yes, of course. and other "bottom feeders" too (excuse my phrasing), and middle managers too ... alas corporations tend to be broken as I mentioned. And as a consequence, I found that outside our vocal minority most people develop the "if I don't care it doesn't hurt" mindset, they do want to close tickets and nothing more.

lucianbr 2y ago

> Delivery deliver deliver, all the time, features forever. This is the mindset, and a huge problem. But Agile does not cause it. (Or solve it, of course.) Money causes it. Features bring money, more than other things, most of the time. Money in the short term. And few managers seem to care about the long term. If anything, Agile is liked by managers because it claims to allow building features non-stop.