SwissMicros Calculator Forum

I am led to assume that this topic will be flooding over in no time. Anybody?

I lean towards the "agile is for the lazy developer" line. Even though I'm a developer and our approach is far more agile than most. A high level of self motivation is beneficial.


Pauli

I haven't read the "Agile Manifesto" so I can't comment on the issue of what Agile is vs. what it is supposed to be. I do, however, have the experience of working in three different companies that each were run by true Agile believers, and while the details differed somewhat, the big picture was exactly the same: as developers, we ended up having to waste about 1 to 2 hours per day on accounting for every time we farted or picked our noses, planning for every detail, justifying every time something took longer than planned, etc. It was classic micro-management, with a dose of mandatory AA meetings, all taken to the extreme. Stress levels increased and productivity suffered, and people went from loving to hating their jobs in no time flat. And the quality of our products suffered as well, because systematic issues and architecture were no longer being discussed. The only thing management cared about was Agile compliance.

I get the sense that many managers consider the loss of job satisfaction to be a feature, not a bug. Happy people means lazy people, gotta whip these bums into shape, something like that. That our quality and customer satisfaction were also going to hell went unnoticed in this orgy of Being A Manager.

Thanks, guys!

Yes, the Emperor's New Clothes springs to mind, as does Maslow's Hammer. And I have heard all I care for about managers recognizing the importance of talent - THEIR talent (alone).

All I want to tell about this I've written elsewhere already: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2216&start=610#p12352

Duly noted. Brainless adaptation of any hype unsurprisingly leads to bad results and side effects.

H2X wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 03, 2019 6:59 pm

Duly noted. Brainless adaptation of any hype unsurprisingly leads to bad results and side effects.

+1

As someone noted in another discussion on this topic — I don't remember if it was on the MoHPC forum or in private — the question that appears to often not get asked before jumping on the Agile bandwagon is: What problem are you trying to solve? When an answer to that question is not forthcoming, expect bad things.

Thomas Okken wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 03, 2019 8:12 pm

As someone noted in another discussion on this topic — I don't remember if it was on the MoHPC forum or in private — the question that appears to often not get asked before jumping on the Agile bandwagon is: What problem are you trying to solve? When an answer to that question is not forthcoming, expect bad things.

Good point, and apparently - and sadly - too true.

One answer, while not always spoken out loud, might be cutting costs. Which often equates to cutting corners, not paying due attention to fundamental issues not "valued" by the paying customer.

But knowing this particular answer doesn't necessarily change the outcome.

My professional opinion after a decade of Agile methodology is extremely, extremely negative. I've seen much better results using Waterfall. Please, give me thousands of pages of well thought out project documentation before starting development in earnest.

Explaining Software Development Methods By Flying To Mars [Comic]