Agile Is a Tainted Term

https://www.pcloadletter.dev/blog/agile/

by peterkonsz • 2 years ago

76 107 2 years ago

The closest I've found to agile is when a team says they use "extreme programming", but I still find it funny that even EP goes against the "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools", or at least walks a tightrope on whether it's a process or not.

The_Colonel• 2 years ago

I see people kind of assuming that this agile principle implies there should be no process at all. Do you make that assumption or where does the perceived contradiction come from?

SideburnsOfDoom6• 2 years ago

There is a human tendency for absolutes, black and white, binary, either-or thinking, and it seems to manifest no matter what.

If this is happening here, this is a good example, as the front page of the Agile manifesto is laconically short, 10 lines of text ( https://agilemanifesto.org/ )

And includes the repeated formulation "x over y" - NB this is not "x, instead of y", not "x, not y" And then clarifies with "That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

If people can read an absolute from that, then they can read it anywhere.

quectophoton3• 2 years ago

Now that you point this out, I was actually making that assumption yes. My bad.

In my defense, I forgot about the fine print on the agile manifesto website.

SPBS• 2 years ago

I wish more people understood this. Nobody should be arguing for Agile anymore. Don't say "no, but-" or "that is not what the Manifesto says-" because you're only strengthening the case for Agile as propagated by the fraudmasters simply by virtue of it sharing the same name as the thing you're arguing for. Leave the term behind, find something else.

GauntletWizard• 2 years ago

The problem is that it's a neverending treadmill of naming if you do that. Every good idea will be taken over by fraudsters. A lot of good ideas are already tainted by this, and while you have to pick your battles, there's something to be said for standing your ground on naming.

grugagag• 2 years ago

Don’t name it, just do. As soon as you name it and becomes a bit known fraudsters come, take the name and begin the grift

BLKNSLVR• 2 years ago

The problem is that it's a neverending treadmill of naming if you do that.

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have replaced KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) due to some kind of contrived negative connotation that became associated with KPIs over time

But they're the exact same thing.

Something else will replace OKR in a few years so that management can sound as if they're more in tune with the sensitivities of their employees and, yes, OKRs were a bit on the nose, so luckily we've got FCKs now, they're modern and progressive, like us!

How many FCKs do you give?

pydry7• 2 years ago

The thing that made agile ripe for fraudsters/cargo cultists was how vaguely it was defined.

That can be fixed by defining something new, more precisely.

Vegenoid• 2 years ago

This is just how language often works. A term is co-opted and becomes increasingly associated with more things. Rarely are people able to reverse this process, so to narrow the associations requires a new term.

drewcoo2• 2 years ago

Leave the term behind, find something else.

Asking software engineers to name things? Now you have two problems.

chris_nielsen• 2 years ago

Page wont load for me. BUT, this title is the first sensible thing I’ve heard someone say about Agile in 10 years.

I just don’t use the word Agile. Too many people like it for the wrong reasons, or hate it for the wrong reasons. Everyone has a different understanding of it. It’s just not useful.

If I say “let’s use Agile” it’s just going to lead to arguments and misunderstandings.

Id always rather be more specific about which Agile idea I think will be useful. E.g. “let’s build a prototype before we waste time planning too much detail” or “lets get something built and released so we can learn more about what our customers want” etc.

bazil376• 2 years ago

Your last paragraph is basically the conclusion of the article. “Agile” is so loaded it’s not worth using

i_have_an_idea• 2 years ago

Agile/Scrum is one of those things that are impossible to criticize. You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid.

At the same time, I have now done software engineering for over a decade, in many roles and teams, and I have never seen Agile or Scrum to lead to the development of a good piece of software. I guess we were using it wrong.

midasz3• 2 years ago

What do you use that does lead to a good piece of software?

SideburnsOfDoom6• 2 years ago

Individuals and interactions, over processes and tools.

slivanes• 2 years ago

By focusing on the product rather than the process.

PradeetPatel• 2 years ago

Having clear requirements, good communications with key stakeholders and empower the enginees.

thimp4• 2 years ago

I’ve seen agile done well once. Yes it does happen. The process was not described, spoken of or even considered. It just existed between a few like minded decent engineers.

Their manager got an “agile PM” forced on them and it broke.

The problem is charlatans, dictators and career ticket shufflers that deliver little to no ROI and generally abject chaos.

hkt2• 2 years ago

Exactly the same thing here. Once some interloper with paper qualifications and no tech background rocks up and says "this is how agile works!" you're doomed.

The only time I've ever seen this not happen was when we had a 55 year old delivery manager who viewed his job as facilitating team meetings in a way that meant everyone got the chance to speak and that consensus formed. Didn't try to dictate process or anything, just made sure everyone got heard and that decisions got made. He was patient enough to wait and not force the issues, too.

Scubabear68• 2 years ago

The charlatans are a serious problem in software engineering today.

DrNosferatu• 2 years ago

Quality engineering has to be *repeatable*.

If it’s not described, and only works via the “minds of a few engineers”, you get amateur treehouse-quality engineering like the 737 MAX.

I guess chance can make it work well like that “once” sporadically, but when you need to touch that code again to maintain it, we go back to the amateur treehouse.

whstl8• 2 years ago

I also had perfectly operating squads crumble to dust because of PMs, more than once.

I still don't understand the role of PMs when there are engineering managers, product owners and self-organizing teams involved.

pydry7• 2 years ago

"Agile" was defined so vaguely in the beginning that it became a kind of template for everyone to project their (often contradictory) ideas and dreams on to.

Scrum fixed that by being as bad as it was precisely defined.

I can get what the originators of agile were getting at but they explained themselves super badly.

photonerd• 2 years ago

Scrum is supposed to be training wheels for agile, not the end point.

I think a lot of ppl forget that.

foofie• 2 years ago

You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid.

What I've seen the most is people putting up straw men in place of Agile, and proceed to attack the strawman in spite of being repeatedly pointed out they are pummelling a straw man.

Jensson• 2 years ago

Problem is that managers actually tells you to follow that straw man.

turkey99• 2 years ago

Scrum is easy to criticise. Agile less so. One such Agile criticism is about principle “that working software as the primary measure of progress”. I understand the sentiment but it’s not enough, it’s got to meet the customer’s needs. Scrum is far too sprint release coupled. Sure you could separate them, but are you really doing Scrum then?

SigmundA• 2 years ago

You can come up with a well-reasoned critique of Agile and there's always some Agile evangelist that pops up to tell you that you're not doing "real agile" and, therefore, your experience is invalid.

Just the typical "No True Scotsman" fallacy [1], happens all the time when there is no good defense of the position.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Viliam1234• 2 years ago

By the same logic, there are no actual quantum physicists, because various "quantum healers" outnumber them. So we need to admit that everything "quantum" is nonsense, otherwise we are committing the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

Sometimes the fakes simply do outnumber the real ones.

euroderf• 2 years ago

Last time I checked, Agile had zero to say about documentation. Is there any improvement on this front ?

EchoChamberMan6• 2 years ago

The second value of the agile manifesto is "Working software over comprehensive documentation." It is important to remember also "That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."

https://agilemanifesto.org/

web3-is-a-scam• 2 years ago

I work at a company that did Agile/Scrum ok - it wasn’t perfect but we had regular retros and we tried to improve our processes and we were given some leeway from management to have some of the work required to support those processes into our sprints.

Then the CTO left, and was never replaced, then the layoffs came and a competent PM was replaced with a junior. Entire design department replaced with a single junior as well. Engineering gutted. Ok, lay-offs happen but at least I still have a job.

Then came “we’re waterfall now”. You know what didn’t come with it? Actual planning, documentation or specs or anything typical of “waterfall”. Estimates are now guessed before anything is defined and turned into commitments. You know what we still had? “Daily stand ups”, “backlog grooming”, two week “sprints”, and no retrospectives. No opportunity or agency to try to make things better - just endlessly stuck in my own personal hell.

Now we have projects that are supposed to take 2 months now taking 6. We have last minute spec changes that require massive rewrites because UAT isn’t done until the end of the entire project. “PM is slow to write out requirements” so we’re basically expected to just guess what they are based on very small selection of unfinished design flows.

And of course, executive wonders “why does engineering take so long to deliver”.

I started calling this “scrumerfall” or even ”fragile”. It’s basically the worst of both with none of the positives.

I don’t know what point I’m actually trying to make…just get like ranting and this seemed like a good time lol

SideburnsOfDoom6• 2 years ago

Yes. What I have said before, for the same reasons, is that when the average office that says "we do the Agile", what they mean is that they have top-down, upfront planned micromanagement via tools such as Jira. *

This has nothing in common with the values of the Agile Manifesto. In fact it's more like the opposite of them.

* I hate Jira. Jira is not the cause of the problem. People's desire for a tool like that is cause of Jira. Kill Jira, and it would soon be replaced with something much the same.

misnome• 2 years ago

We’re going to be officially moving to Agile! Soon.

By which I mean the project planning committee has created a multi-hundred page document with precise BPM-style workflow charts (based on Jira, obviously), and non-technical managers have started being sent on multi-day training courses to learn how to follow them.

It’s going to be a shitshow!

SideburnsOfDoom6• 2 years ago

the project planning committee has created a multi-hundred page document with precise workflow charts ... It’s going to be a shitshow!

A Waterfall of effluent, spilling from the end of the process pipe, branded "Agile!" (TM, sponsored by Atlassian).

What are you moving from ?

KevinMS• 2 years ago

Dave Thomas has a talk about this

Agile is Dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

To oversimplify it, he says "agile" has become a noun when it was always meant to be an adjective. In other words, if you are "doing" agile, you aren't really being agile.

4pkjai• 2 years ago

A sales guy told me his team does Agile. I asked him what he meant.

“We have don’t have assigned desks”.

Tabular-Iceberg6• 2 years ago

Another problem is that the Agile OGs keep overselling their methodology.

They keep saying that waterfall just doesn't work, yet almost all commercially successful (and unsuccessful) software is produced that way, whether they claim to use Agile or not. Would it be better if they used "real Agile"? Of course! But you only ever have to be just good enough.

benbruscella• 2 years ago

http://programming-motherfucker.com/

viraptor3• 2 years ago

I wish that was a joke, but it's Zed so... No, you can't replace customer collaboration with more programming. When you're in a programming hole of misunderstood solutions, you can't fix that by doing more programming. When things keep changing without good reasons, you can't fix that by doing more programming, etc.

bruce3434343• 2 years ago

When things keep changing without good reasons, you

- tell the client to get their shit together

- fire the client

- walk away

Tabular-Iceberg6• 2 years ago

He's not saying replacing customer collaboration with programming. He's saying replace bleeding clients dry under the pretense of customer collaboration with programming.

sime20092• 2 years ago

The rarely discussed cornerstone of Agile is trusting the team and letting them organise themselves. For most organisation this represents a huge internal change in power structure.

The Agile industrial complex can't really sell a message to their customers (i.e. managers) that the development teams should have the power and run themselves how they feel fit. This message amounts to "if this works, we can fire the managers". Not a popular message for managers.

So, instead of building on an agile foundation, companies just add some story points and funny sounding meetings on top of the old structure and nothing really changes. It is Agile cosplay.

pitched• 2 years ago

I’ll take this a step further too and say that if Agile is being introduced by management, it means they don’t trust their teams to organize themselves. Agile, as sold, can’t actually work in that environment. The battle is already lost.

sime20092• 2 years ago

That's right. It can't be pushed down from above. The team has to want to do this and take the power.

A manager can start work on this kind of culture shift without even saying the word "agile". They need to give their teams more trust and room to govern themselves. i.e. managers need to get out of the way. When a team is open to the idea of Agile or scrum, then the manager could ask the team if they would like training or coaching. But the ground has to be made fertile first.

codex_beta• 2 years ago

The agile approach is generally academic mumbo jumbo that is rarely effective/efficient in large-scale industrial practice. Coming from an industry where functional safety is paramount, I think the agile approach is rarely appropriate unless you want to effectively waste everyone's valuable time with unnecessary overheads. If the product has already been launched or is at a pre-launch stage AND the team is small and professional enough, it might even work, but then why bother with such processes and roles overheads in the first place!

Irrespective of the chosen approach, it’s crucial to systematically elicit requirements, document specifications, and rigorously verify and validate everything. Implementation should ideally be supported by thorough unit tests, and, most importantly, all artifacts must be traceable across different abstraction layers and to the required level of detail.

EchoChamberMan6• 2 years ago

As soon as "agile" became "Agile" with a capital A, the war was lost. "Doing" Agile is missing the point; one must be agile.

koreth1• 2 years ago

Scrum is the thing that has tainted "agile" in my opinion, because Scrum is so widespread that many people think they're the same thing.

Leaving aside the "agile is a philosophy, not a methodology" argument, there are well-defined agile methodologies other than Scrum. I've worked at a couple Kanban shops and, while our dev processes were far from perfect, most of the things people routinely hate about "agile" just didn't come up at all because they're actually Scrum features.

If the thing you don't like involves the words "sprint" or "standup," you are complaining about Scrum, not agile.

Agile Is a Tainted Term

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