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I love the idea of agile. And I've tried to apply the principles to hundreds and hundreds of projects. But as a consulting type, I've never understood how you

by apercu 2y ago

I love the idea of agile. And I've tried to apply the principles to hundreds and hundreds of projects. But as a consulting type, I've never understood how you run a project with a fixed (well, ok, continuously growing usually) scope, a fixed budget and a fixed timeline. Which are basically the constraints on every single project. I think I have found though, that if you can get a client that will spend the time to really define the project goals and how they will be measured, you can almost steer the scope in the direction of priority features. Then, you can be somewhat successful with running agile on certain parts of a project (like UX design), while "phase-gating" other components of the project that have real dependencies. You end up, in effect, with a waterfall process with some phases being done using agile methodologies.

dheera 2y ago
I hate labelled methodologies like "agile" and "waterfall". Manager types routinely think that they're going to change the world by being "agile". I mean, as a fast learner, I'm already agile, have been for 20 years, it's not like you discovered it yesterday. Lots of people have been agile for thousands of years. In reality things get done if you, the manager, unblock blockers, fund necessary shit without piles of documents, make employees happy to work, and make sure nobody is wasting time doing things they are not good at.
lnsru 2y ago
Sounds like your clients know what they are doing. That’s very nice way of working. I was involved as employee in countless dubious agile called projects. It’s good way to hide missing project management covering it with dubious rituals like daily standup. That’s exactly what happens in kindergarten and is called morning circle. I must smile thinking adults doing the same in the office.
- apercu 2y ago
  Basically that's exactly the problem, a serious lack of leadership in nearly every organization. Very little adult behaviour. Rather than discuss how specific features can and will solve business objectives and how exactly they will be measured, it's all a bunch of hand-waving and arbitrary deadlines.
proaralyst 2y ago
I just don't think agile is designed for fixed-anything. Every project has unknowns: you can either spend effort to de-risk the project and increase your confidence in the time/cost estimates, then sell the job (ie waterfall/big plan first); or you can Just Try Stuff and adapt as you figure out that various things are easier or harder than you thought. I think consultancies and corporations looked at vertically-integrated tech companies having lots of success with agile & decided they needed agile themselves, but didn't want to give up fixed-price. Probably correctly! But the key to those tech companies' success was the vertical integration, not the agile methodology

by apercu 2y ago

dheera 2y ago

I hate labelled methodologies like "agile" and "waterfall". Manager types routinely think that they're going to change the world by being "agile". I mean, as a fast learner, I'm already agile, have been for 20 years, it's not like you discovered it yesterday. Lots of people have been agile for thousands of years. In reality things get done if you, the manager, unblock blockers, fund necessary shit without piles of documents, make employees happy to work, and make sure nobody is wasting time doing things they are not good at.

lnsru 2y ago

Sounds like your clients know what they are doing. That’s very nice way of working. I was involved as employee in countless dubious agile called projects. It’s good way to hide missing project management covering it with dubious rituals like daily standup. That’s exactly what happens in kindergarten and is called morning circle. I must smile thinking adults doing the same in the office.

apercu 2y ago
Basically that's exactly the problem, a serious lack of leadership in nearly every organization. Very little adult behaviour. Rather than discuss how specific features can and will solve business objectives and how exactly they will be measured, it's all a bunch of hand-waving and arbitrary deadlines.

proaralyst 2y ago

I just don't think agile is designed for fixed-anything. Every project has unknowns: you can either spend effort to de-risk the project and increase your confidence in the time/cost estimates, then sell the job (ie waterfall/big plan first); or you can Just Try Stuff and adapt as you figure out that various things are easier or harder than you thought. I think consultancies and corporations looked at vertically-integrated tech companies having lots of success with agile & decided they needed agile themselves, but didn't want to give up fixed-price. Probably correctly! But the key to those tech companies' success was the vertical integration, not the agile methodology