SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the what-if-you-can't-program-your-way-out-of-a-paper-bag? dept.
Agile Development is hip. It's hot. All the cool kids are doing it.
But it doesn't work.
Before I get into why this "Agile" stuff is horrible, let's describe where Agile/Scrum can work. It can work for a time-sensitive and critical project of short duration (6 weeks max) that cross-cuts the business and has no clear manager, because it involves people from multiple departments. You can call it a "Code Red" or call it a Scrum or a "War Room" if you have a physical room for it.
Note that "Agile" comes from the consulting world. It suits well the needs of a small consulting firm, not yet very well-established, that lands one big-ticket project and needs to deliver it quickly, despite changing requirements and other potential bad behavior from the client. It works well when you have a relatively homogeneous talent level and a staff of generalists, which might also be true for an emerging web consultancy.
As a short-term methodology when a firm faces an existential risk or a game-changing opportunity, I'm not opposed to the "Code Red"/"crunch time"/Scrum practice of ignoring peoples' career goals and their individual talents. I have in mind that this "Code Red" state should exist for no more than 6 weeks per year in a well-run business. Even that's less than ideal: the ideal is zero. Frequent crises reflect poorly on management.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:15PM (5 children)
This is the part where most companies seem to fail. They say "let's try this thing" and it goes poorly. They forgot how long it took for them to evolve their current system and when the new system fails to go perfectly they throw it out like garbage. A lot of people resist the new system too.
Waterfall works better when your specs never change and business doesn't re-prioritize stuff. I never see that with software. Though, i am in a "fast changing" software industry. Might be different for people writing device drivers.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:20PM (3 children)
I used Agile/Scrum/TDD for writing specialist device drivers. The company previously had a track record of abandoned, late and buggy products. This one got 100% "customer satisfaction." Unfortunately that meant they thought they could keep cutting the software engineering budget... Bloody PHBs.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:20PM (2 children)
Ouch! Maybe you have discovered the real reason why engineers hate TDD? : P
We test a lot at work but don't practice TDD as a religion. It does certainly result in less production support required.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
Religion and science/engineering don't mix, in general.
What continually amazes me is the number of people apparently older, wiser and more intelligent than me that think they don't need TDD because they're so great and their code is so marvelous. They apparently haven't heard of the four stages of competency, or think they're already at the top: 1 Unconscious Incompetent, 2 Conscious Incompetent, 3 Conscious Competent, 4 Unconscious Competent.
You should never get to stage 4 when writing code for the following reason. If you do, then you're doing something you already did before, so why aren't you reusing it?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05 2018, @02:25AM
Religion and science/engineering don't mix, in general.
Yes, but sometimes they work out amazingly well.
Religion is basically faith.
Part of what got Apple to where they are not was the faith of SJ in knowing where to go.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:01PM
LOL. Lessee, I wrote for custom hardware back in the 80s. Did a lot of Ethernet and DMA in the 90s. Did a lot of PCI and 802.11 in the 00s. On to video/display drivers recently. In between add a couple USB, Firewire, disk controller, and other custom boards.
Every project has a new chip with new features that is different enough that if you're lucky you can reuse the int main() {}.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.