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Agile gave managers the idea that any task, no matter how complex, should be able to be broken down enough to fit into a ticket that can be estimated semi-accur

Agile gave managers the idea that any task, no matter how complex, should be able to be broken down enough to fit into a ticket that can be estimated semi-accurately before even looking into the problem, and the work required to complete the ticket can fit into a two week time period

iliaskurt 1y ago
comment of the year
vannevar 1y ago
I think managers had those kind of ideas way before agile. And if anyone on the team doesn't think a given ticket can be completed within a sprint, they should speak up--the whole point is that the team concurs that X can be done in a sprint, and they collectively decide what X is. Empirically, I'd say in my experience that the sprint velocity has been accurate around 80% of the time. Which is enough to be useful.
- azangru 1y ago
  I'd just like to point out that the notion of 'sprint', let alone sprint velocity, comes specifically from scrum. Which is just one version of agile software development, albeit the most common one. For example, the arbitrariness of the sprint timebox, as well as the guessing of how much will be done over that time period, are perhaps among its weakest ideas, and have often been criticized.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    I think that at this point people have to let go of "Scrum is not the only way to do Agile" It's "technically" true, and I admit that, but this battle is lost If someone says they are doing Agile they mean Scrum. Otherwise they will specify Kanban (or whatever else) by name I know it's not technically correct, but that's just how it is, sorry
  - vannevar 1y ago
    Fair. But the central idea of scrum is a self-managed team, and there's nothing that says every sprint has to have the same duration, it just makes calculating the velocity easier. There's also nothing that says you can't pause sprints for some unstructured design and experimentation time, something that I think teams do too little of. The problem is that many organizations don't understand the self-managing aspect and simply put a manager in charge of the team and the scrum, which pretty much sabotages things from the start. This micromanagement, along with imposing unrealistic development timelines, are the two biggest mistakes that I commonly see. Neither of them are unique to agile.
anonymars 1y ago
I think t-shirt sizing is madness. "How long is a piece of string?" But we've had tickets to create other tickets, because, as you point out, speccing out the feature (including what does it do and what does it not do) is itself a ton of work In fact I wager that coding is...20%, maybe 25%? of the work that goes into providing value*? So Amdahl's law says having AI optimize that part isn't going to move the needle all that much *it's certainly possible to expend lots more effort coding, but is it coding in the right direction?
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > In fact I wager that coding is...20%, maybe 25%? of the work that goes into providing value Ehh... I've heard this sort of reasoning before and I get where it comes from, but I'm not sure I agree. It feels like "Idea Guy" propaganda to overvalue their contribution. Figuring out what to build doesn't provide real value at all imo. It provides theoretical value. Coding is closer to 100% of the work that actually provides the value Edit: This is why people who actually have skills to build things are made to sign NDAs and Non-competes when hired or before being pitched projects. The ideas people want to keep the value of their idea and undervalue the skill of actually building things
  - anonymars 1y ago
    I am in no way saying "the idea guy" is doing 80% of the work, that's probably less than 10% Put another way -- genuine question to which I have only a guess: who does more coding during an average day? A junior developer or a senior developer? Broadly I'd posit the junior developers do a lot more coding, and the more senior you get the more important "English" becomes over any programming language. Maybe I'm in an aberrant bubble. But I doubt it. > This is why people who actually have skills to build things are made to sign NDAs and Non-competes when hired or before being pitched projects. So what I'm getting at is, my version would be: "this is why senior developers code less than junior developers"

iliaskurt 1y ago

comment of the year

vannevar 1y ago

I think managers had those kind of ideas way before agile. And if anyone on the team doesn't think a given ticket can be completed within a sprint, they should speak up--the whole point is that the team concurs that X can be done in a sprint, and they collectively decide what X is. Empirically, I'd say in my experience that the sprint velocity has been accurate around 80% of the time. Which is enough to be useful.

azangru 1y ago
I'd just like to point out that the notion of 'sprint', let alone sprint velocity, comes specifically from scrum. Which is just one version of agile software development, albeit the most common one. For example, the arbitrariness of the sprint timebox, as well as the guessing of how much will be done over that time period, are perhaps among its weakest ideas, and have often been criticized.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  I think that at this point people have to let go of "Scrum is not the only way to do Agile" It's "technically" true, and I admit that, but this battle is lost If someone says they are doing Agile they mean Scrum. Otherwise they will specify Kanban (or whatever else) by name I know it's not technically correct, but that's just how it is, sorry
- vannevar 1y ago
  Fair. But the central idea of scrum is a self-managed team, and there's nothing that says every sprint has to have the same duration, it just makes calculating the velocity easier. There's also nothing that says you can't pause sprints for some unstructured design and experimentation time, something that I think teams do too little of. The problem is that many organizations don't understand the self-managing aspect and simply put a manager in charge of the team and the scrum, which pretty much sabotages things from the start. This micromanagement, along with imposing unrealistic development timelines, are the two biggest mistakes that I commonly see. Neither of them are unique to agile.

anonymars 1y ago

I think t-shirt sizing is madness. "How long is a piece of string?" But we've had tickets to create other tickets, because, as you point out, speccing out the feature (including what does it do and what does it not do) is itself a ton of work In fact I wager that coding is...20%, maybe 25%? of the work that goes into providing value*? So Amdahl's law says having AI optimize that part isn't going to move the needle all that much *it's certainly possible to expend lots more effort coding, but is it coding in the right direction?

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> In fact I wager that coding is...20%, maybe 25%? of the work that goes into providing value Ehh... I've heard this sort of reasoning before and I get where it comes from, but I'm not sure I agree. It feels like "Idea Guy" propaganda to overvalue their contribution. Figuring out what to build doesn't provide real value at all imo. It provides theoretical value. Coding is closer to 100% of the work that actually provides the value Edit: This is why people who actually have skills to build things are made to sign NDAs and Non-competes when hired or before being pitched projects. The ideas people want to keep the value of their idea and undervalue the skill of actually building things
- anonymars 1y ago
  I am in no way saying "the idea guy" is doing 80% of the work, that's probably less than 10% Put another way -- genuine question to which I have only a guess: who does more coding during an average day? A junior developer or a senior developer? Broadly I'd posit the junior developers do a lot more coding, and the more senior you get the more important "English" becomes over any programming language. Maybe I'm in an aberrant bubble. But I doubt it. > This is why people who actually have skills to build things are made to sign NDAs and Non-competes when hired or before being pitched projects. So what I'm getting at is, my version would be: "this is why senior developers code less than junior developers"