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Agile is software. How can you talk Agile without involving the people who create it? And yet, non-devs are the people that talk about going to these Agile con

Agile is software. How can you talk Agile without involving the people who create it? And yet, non-devs are the people that talk about going to these Agile conferences. They're also the people targeted for Certified Scrum Master certifications. The movement of Agile away from developers has been happening for awhile. It's just another management philosophy now. Does it matter that the people creating the software are no longer at the table. Yes. Full stop. All in all, I feel that the author is simply answering his own questions.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> The movement of Agile away from developers has been happening for awhile. It's just another management philosophy now. No, its not. Its a management buzzword now. It started as a philosophy, and where it still is, the substance of its principles remains important. But, increasingly, its become a meaningless phrase that marketeers that neither understand nor care about technology slap on snake oil to sell it to managers that are out of the day-to-day process of technology.
- allochthon 12y ago
  Its a management buzzword now. To expand on this a little -- members of larger organizations have succeeded in neutralizing a threat to their perceived interests by making the language mean less than it used to. Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. That must feel like a threat if your position involves little more than politely instructing other people what to do.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > To expand on this a little -- members of larger organizations have neutralized a threat by making the language mean less than it used to. I think that looking at it as threat neutralization is badly misleading. I don't think management saw agile as a threat and neutralized, I think (1) management saw it as something that was producing value that they wanted to harness and implement, but generally failed to understand, and (2) people selling to management recognized this demand, and slapped the valuable label on whatever they could package. No threat, all opportunity. But same net effect. > Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. That must feel like a threat if your position involves little more than politely instructing other people what to do. Honestly, I think that that the subset of management that understands agile well enough that they could feel threatened by it if they couldn't find a way to profit from it is the same subset that understands how to let it happen and own the results. The one that would be threatened by it if they could understand it well enough don't.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      There is a contingent of managers who feel that users talking to devs is somehow a threat.
      - ripter 12y ago
        "I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. That must feel like a threat if your position involves little more than politely instructing other people what to do. Yes indeed. There have been many times when I've been explicitly forbidden to talk to actual users in big companies.
    - tbrownaw 12y ago
      Were there reasons given for this? Two somewhat reasonable possibilities that immediately come to mind are (1) the difference between anecdotes and solid data; and (2) wanting to have decisions and rationales documented.
      - dev360 12y ago
        This has happened to me a lot too. A lot of times there will be tons of politics involved and for whatever reason somebody (a team or project lead) may want to portray 'their' version of the narrative mostly for political reasons. At one place where I worked there were 4-5 big teams with different technology specializations and for every big project we did, these 4 teams had to have a cut of the project for budgeting purposes. So no matter if there was a need for it or not, youd have BizTalk, or SAP, or SalesForce or whatever inject themselves into a solution and create a complete mess from an architecture standpoint. Completely idiotic.
      - stcredzero 12y ago
        Specifically that the users don't always "know what's best."I could well be "(1) the difference between anecdotes and solid data; and (2) wanting to have decisions and rationales documented." The problem is that this is biased against genuine insights by the user population.
  - tbrownaw 12y ago
    Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. I like having a rate limiter between me and the people who keep changing their minds about what I should be doing. I like being able to outsource the job of talking sense into those people.
    - Consultant32452 12y ago
      All too often the person between me and the people who keep changing their minds are sales people who will tell the customer that everything is possible, and usually for free.
    - ripter 12y ago
      Agreed. Good management doesn't bother me about every little change and gets the customer to appreciate what we can actually deliver.
dev360 12y ago
I used to be in 'Enterprise' development and I have noticed that a lot of people I knew who were doing PM work have now jumped onto the Agile bandwagon.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The movement of Agile away from developers has been happening for awhile. It's just another management philosophy now. No, its not. Its a management buzzword now. It started as a philosophy, and where it still is, the substance of its principles remains important. But, increasingly, its become a meaningless phrase that marketeers that neither understand nor care about technology slap on snake oil to sell it to managers that are out of the day-to-day process of technology.

allochthon 12y ago
Its a management buzzword now. To expand on this a little -- members of larger organizations have succeeded in neutralizing a threat to their perceived interests by making the language mean less than it used to. Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. That must feel like a threat if your position involves little more than politely instructing other people what to do.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > To expand on this a little -- members of larger organizations have neutralized a threat by making the language mean less than it used to. I think that looking at it as threat neutralization is badly misleading. I don't think management saw agile as a threat and neutralized, I think (1) management saw it as something that was producing value that they wanted to harness and implement, but generally failed to understand, and (2) people selling to management recognized this demand, and slapped the valuable label on whatever they could package. No threat, all opportunity. But same net effect. > Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. That must feel like a threat if your position involves little more than politely instructing other people what to do. Honestly, I think that that the subset of management that understands agile well enough that they could feel threatened by it if they couldn't find a way to profit from it is the same subset that understands how to let it happen and own the results. The one that would be threatened by it if they could understand it well enough don't.
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    There is a contingent of managers who feel that users talking to devs is somehow a threat.
    - ripter 12y ago
      "I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?"
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. That must feel like a threat if your position involves little more than politely instructing other people what to do. Yes indeed. There have been many times when I've been explicitly forbidden to talk to actual users in big companies.
  - tbrownaw 12y ago
    Were there reasons given for this? Two somewhat reasonable possibilities that immediately come to mind are (1) the difference between anecdotes and solid data; and (2) wanting to have decisions and rationales documented.
    - dev360 12y ago
      This has happened to me a lot too. A lot of times there will be tons of politics involved and for whatever reason somebody (a team or project lead) may want to portray 'their' version of the narrative mostly for political reasons. At one place where I worked there were 4-5 big teams with different technology specializations and for every big project we did, these 4 teams had to have a cut of the project for budgeting purposes. So no matter if there was a need for it or not, youd have BizTalk, or SAP, or SalesForce or whatever inject themselves into a solution and create a complete mess from an architecture standpoint. Completely idiotic.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      Specifically that the users don't always "know what's best."I could well be "(1) the difference between anecdotes and solid data; and (2) wanting to have decisions and rationales documented." The problem is that this is biased against genuine insights by the user population.
- tbrownaw 12y ago
  Effective agile practice breaks down a barrier between people making decisions and people doing the work. I like having a rate limiter between me and the people who keep changing their minds about what I should be doing. I like being able to outsource the job of talking sense into those people.
  - Consultant32452 12y ago
    All too often the person between me and the people who keep changing their minds are sales people who will tell the customer that everything is possible, and usually for free.
  - ripter 12y ago
    Agreed. Good management doesn't bother me about every little change and gets the customer to appreciate what we can actually deliver.

dev360 12y ago

I used to be in 'Enterprise' development and I have noticed that a lot of people I knew who were doing PM work have now jumped onto the Agile bandwagon.