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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday January 04 2018, @02:11PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:20PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 04 2018, @05:20PM (#617809)

    Intel apparently had a part that acted differently depending on 1 undocumented pin strap (it was documented differently for each sku).

    They sold this part in two different markets at vastly different prices, but using the same silicon. Long story short, someone fucking up the shipping orders and sent a load of the cheap parts in place of the expensive parts, the staff at the site didn't check the labelling until after they had installed a few of these parts on their product, and then noticed the product ids were wrong. Long story short: There were some harsh words exchanged over their pricing and the fact that the much cheaper part worked exactly the same (having in fact gone through the exact same testing regime.)

  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:51PM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday January 04 2018, @08:51PM (#617945)

    While we're telling funny stories. Early 80's, early days of robots putting parts in holes on boards (called pick and place). Got a batch of 30 or so boards that didn't work. I was a tech at the time and grabbed one. Very strange patterns on my O'scope.

    Turns out whomever loaded the pick and place machine had put a reel of resistors where caps were supposed to go, and put the reel of caps where the resistors were supposed to go.

    After 30 years bet I've got more stories than 90% of you young whippersnappers who covet my lawn.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.