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: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:31PM (10 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Disagree) by turgid on Thursday January 04 2018, @03:45PM (8 children)
Citation needed. I've gone from Agile to Waterfall and my productivity has dropped by at least half an order of magnitude. Much of the problem is the poor quality of the code resulting from lack of TDD and proper detailed analysis of the requirements.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:14PM
"my productivity has dropped by at least half an order of magnitude"
Protest too much much?
I didn't know Queen Gertrude was a coder.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:17PM (1 child)
"I've gone from Agile to Waterfall and my productivity has dropped by at least half an order of magnitude. Much of the problem is the poor quality of the code resulting from lack of TDD and proper detailed analysis of the requirements."
There is nothing about waterfall that says you shouldn't have solid requirements. The opposite, in fact: waterfall is not good at adapting to change, which means that your requirements need to be very solid. So maybe it's the requirements that are the real problem?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Thursday January 04 2018, @09:18PM
The problem with requirements is having good ones at all. Waterfall makes it practically impossible to get good requirements because it involves no discovery and feedback process and very limited scope for change either due to changing requirements or unforeseen issues (no one can plan 100% accurately up front otherwise I'd have won the lottery and know what the weather will be like in 10 years tomorrow at 2pm).
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @06:24PM (2 children)
TDD is not a property of either Agile or Waterfall. What you're basically saying is that software development is faster when the existing code is of proper quality, which is not really a shocking revelation and has little to do with the development process.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:45PM (1 child)
Oh yes it is. It's one of the better tools in the Agile tool box.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @11:14PM
As the final delivered products of my work, you want working code and unit tests.
Don't micromanage my work process by mandating TDD which is *in my opinion* a piecemeal, hacky way to incorporate new code functionality.
If it works for you, great! If I prefer to design my code ahead of time as more of a complete entity and test the code paths mostly after I write it instead of in lots of little iterations of write/unit test
where I waste time rewriting unit tests as the code evolves, why shouldn't I be allowed? Are you going to sit in my lap and make me take turns typing by pair programming too?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 04 2018, @07:07PM (1 child)
It's called the Hawthorne Effect [wikipedia.org] and it isn't specific to IT.
Pretty much any procedure change will result in a short-term improvement, regardless of whether the change itself is any good.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday January 05 2018, @11:15AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday January 04 2018, @04:22PM
I worked at a place once where they made us move office when up against a very tight critical deadline for that very reason. Luckily the Good Lord saw fit to put 24 hours in a day and invented caffeine.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].