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Agile is Dead
- huherto 17y agoIt is true, agile may not sound innovative anymore. Nevertheless, the principles are sound. If you care about your craft, keep practicing it. edit:grammar
- alexgartrell 17y agoI don't know if I've ever been wholly convinced that certifications do more good than harm, especially in Soft things like Product Management (as opposed to something more clear, like plumbing).
- stcredzero 17y agoUnfortunately, under typical corporate practices, even whether something is a "bug" or not is sometimes soft.
- inerte 17y agoCertifications (well, depend on the cert) for "soft things" are generally used by companies to get everyone talking the same language. I'm a code/architect guy, with a make-it-work-now personality, so I'm more used to say "let's get Bob to fix this shit". But my girlfriend is into IT process, and we're getting an ITIL certification together, because where she works (HP) they do a lot of ITIL. So she and her team talk about how the "Service Desk" should scalate "Change" to a "Problem" or "Incident", which I think are all funny words, but helps everyone to get into the same flow together and makes communication easier. I like my way (d'uh), but that's because my way of doing things have worked so far for my things that needed to be done (pretty philosofical statement!), while obviously her ways have worked for her. In the end, if it's delivered, and the client pay and he's happy, I could care less what's the terminology.
- stcredzero 17y agoIn short: everyone has co-opted the names! That's not doom. Just chalk up another victory and let's come up with some more names. Pair those with versions of the practices that big companies will be too corpulent to implement, and let's have another go!
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoFunny. The author is as bad as those he makes fun of -- he has a list of things that obviously CAN'T be agile and uses that as a discussion point. Agile RUP? Been around for years. The true-blue RUP guys will tell you RUP has always been agile, it's just never practiced that way and the corporate pointy-heads make it into a monster. Agile Maturity Model? Lots of companies already have one. Maturity model just means some way of measuring how well the teams are doing. Certification? Heck, this certification bandwagon has always been lucrative, and now it's just getting worse. Agile works because agile has always worked, even before there was some lame-ass marketing phrase called "agile". That means your grand-dad working on the Apollo moon shot probably used some agile techniques, as did guys on the Manhattan project. He's absolutely right that corporate America is killing agile. But they've been killing agile for so long it isn't funny. This is a problem that has to do with really smart people and their desire to measure and control. It's really a problem with, guess what, us. As technology wonks we're the first to want to create a new metric or standardize something that doesn't need standardizing. As for the proliferation of certifications, do what I do: just say no. I'm not going to play that game. When you ask me about agile, I'll happily share the actual projects and work I produced, but I'm not going to spend good money buying useless pieces of paper.
- mncaudill 17y agoWhat book would you suggest as a good starting point for good Agile techniques?
- ROFISH 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development#Agile_methods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development#Agil... You don't really need a book. The Agile page on Wikipedia and links to the descriptions of the different flavors are all you need.
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoStart with the wiki page but remember that the one thing that all agile teams do is _adapt_. So be careful you don't get in the mindset of "I have to do X, Y, and Z and then I'll be agile" Better to think of it like "I see from the literature and people I trust that X, Y, and Z work for a lot of teams. I should really try that on my next team to see how it does" The worst offenders are people who are successful! Then they take the X, Y, and Z as gospel and try to make them fit on their next team, whether or not they make any sense at all. We get this "well, my last team was agile and we did X, so we absolutely must do X on this project!" That attitude usually ticks everybody off and is counter-productive. Don't be an agile zealot! It's a buffet, not a happy meal. Remember -- always adapt, and use the literature as starting points for things to try on each project. Read lightly and spend more time experimenting and evolving. Agile is really simple, but people try very hard to make it complicated and screw it up. Beats me why.
- andreyf 17y agoI still don't understand what Agile is :( Good thing I sling code better than I sling adjectives :)