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To me, there are a bunch of people who can't do Agile. They have huge legacy software projects, with low test coverage. They have customers that want (or can on

by shubb 13y ago

To me, there are a bunch of people who can't do Agile. They have huge legacy software projects, with low test coverage. They have customers that want (or can only cope with) traditional requirements based contracts. In situations where agile doesn't make sense, do you think 'fake agile' can be a better way of working than 1990s waterfall?

AnimalMuppet 13y ago
"Fake agile" is essentially lying to yourself about what your process is. I can't imagine any situation where that was actually useful.
- StudyAnimal 13y ago
  It may be in some cases. In many cases people are quite open about the hybrid nature of their process and the reasons for it.
StudyAnimal 13y ago
I think most teams using agile, or developing software with some agile practices are in fact working within a hybrid process, where the requirements gathering and analysis, the writing of offers and contracts, and sometimes the delivery of the software all happen in waterfall style phases, and only the development itself is conducted in iterations and with agile technical practices. I still think this is a bit better than full on waterfall. Depending on context of course. It may not be as good as full on agile either.
wpietri 13y ago
In a word, no. There are actually reasonable techniques for doing Agile internally if you have clients who believe they need a traditional requirements-based contract approach. So those people should just do Extreme Programming. For people with huge legacy projects, I think they really need to do the cost-benefit analysis. People like Michael Feathers make a persuasive case that you can slowly clean up legacy code, and that's much more economical than just suffering through expensive and risky changes. But if somebody is deciding not to do Agile for considered cost-benefit reasons, they should just say, "Yeah, Agile doesn't make sense for us. We're going to do waterfall." Or they could choose a mini-waterfall process, or any one of the pre-Agile processes that suits them. (If those people exist, they should read McConnell's Rapid Development, which catalogs the options pretty well.) If that's what they want, godspeed. The people who make me crazy are the ones who don't actually have the discipline to use a real Agile process and also lack the guts to say, "Yeah, fuck that Agile stuff." I get that people would like to be all hip and Agile, but sending somebody out for a 2-day "certification" and then changing a few labels is not actually making better anything internally, and it's making my life worse. I don't want people to be fake anything. Be real, everybody! Especially managers. Because it's only admitting where you're at that's going to let you get somewhere better.

by shubb 13y ago

AnimalMuppet 13y ago

"Fake agile" is essentially lying to yourself about what your process is. I can't imagine any situation where that was actually useful.

StudyAnimal 13y ago
It may be in some cases. In many cases people are quite open about the hybrid nature of their process and the reasons for it.

StudyAnimal 13y ago

I think most teams using agile, or developing software with some agile practices are in fact working within a hybrid process, where the requirements gathering and analysis, the writing of offers and contracts, and sometimes the delivery of the software all happen in waterfall style phases, and only the development itself is conducted in iterations and with agile technical practices. I still think this is a bit better than full on waterfall. Depending on context of course. It may not be as good as full on agile either.

wpietri 13y ago

In a word, no. There are actually reasonable techniques for doing Agile internally if you have clients who believe they need a traditional requirements-based contract approach. So those people should just do Extreme Programming. For people with huge legacy projects, I think they really need to do the cost-benefit analysis. People like Michael Feathers make a persuasive case that you can slowly clean up legacy code, and that's much more economical than just suffering through expensive and risky changes. But if somebody is deciding not to do Agile for considered cost-benefit reasons, they should just say, "Yeah, Agile doesn't make sense for us. We're going to do waterfall." Or they could choose a mini-waterfall process, or any one of the pre-Agile processes that suits them. (If those people exist, they should read McConnell's Rapid Development, which catalogs the options pretty well.) If that's what they want, godspeed. The people who make me crazy are the ones who don't actually have the discipline to use a real Agile process and also lack the guts to say, "Yeah, fuck that Agile stuff." I get that people would like to be all hip and Agile, but sending somebody out for a 2-day "certification" and then changing a few labels is not actually making better anything internally, and it's making my life worse. I don't want people to be fake anything. Be real, everybody! Especially managers. Because it's only admitting where you're at that's going to let you get somewhere better.