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I agree that the implementation is the issue, and I think that the OP suggests that it's the Agile perfectionists who ironically don't embrace the spirit of the thing and force the processes and tools of agile implementations to prominence over the individuals and interactions.

I've never worked in an Agile office, but I do love the manifesto, if not the reports of implementation. In our office, we meet twice a week for basic concerns and discussion of things upcoming, and we share online workspace in a way that allows us to be an extra pair of eyes on any issue (not paired programming, but old-fashioned lending a hand). I would like to have more input into future projects, especially the refactoring and updating of the site, as the agile way seems to inspire.

Nearly half of what I read in your post has nothing to do with Agile.
I'm not an Agile evangelist either - I think a waterfall/agile blend works best.
At least for our group.

Interesting. https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/smiley_confused.gif
Can you be specific about the half?

We use Scrum.

1: Pair Programming
2: Cubified Environment
3: Poorly Run Meetings

In all the Scrum training I've received no mention of paired programming at all.
As for the open workspace, that is just ridiculous. More frequent communication != distracting work environment.
Also, our morning meetings are timeboxed to 15 minutes - so poorly run meetings aren't Agile either.

If you're in a poorly run Agile environment then yes, it will be chaos and a waste of time; however that can be said for any poorly run methodology.

Sounds like you have really bad management.

And it was the primary reason I quit after 9 years.

Now, 2 developers, no Agile, private office. It's called developer heaven. https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/smiley_smile.gif

I left that environment for an Agile team.

The problem I was having in the situation you now find yourself in is that management was totally uninvested in what we were doing. Turns out bad management can ruin heaven.

That doesn't mean you're in a bad place - I just suspect you went from bad management to good management thereby bolstering other claims made here: Methodology is secondary to management.

Actually, I went from a large monolith company to a smaller company that respects our work environment and abilities, and leaves us to do our job we were hired to do, not attend kindergarten every day.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, wait - I'm in the lounge, that happens naturally here....

My perception, and it's been a few years that the roots of agile come from extreme programming (there is a great book somewhere here, maybe my attic) which with the exception of pair programming, opened my eyes to some serious issues in our industry. At the time, I was a manager of a DB development team. After I read this book, my conclusion was we're doing this wrong.

This is where Agile just made things way too complex for me. KISS is better for project management - hence I understand the OP's rant. Nuggets and epiphanies I pulled from this book:

Customers set features. Customers won't know exactly what they want until you put something in front of them. Customers lie. They think they know what they want. Beware.
The requirements / features will change. Stop your bitching. You best have a management model to deal with it. I've listened to developers complain for 40 years about changing requirements. It's normal. I think agile addresses this with gold plated story boards, etc. I don't know. Just recognizing the facts that customers do not know what they want and things will change is the first step in recovery.
Customers do not do estimates. The people doing the work do. Again, over many years I have seen really smart people go green and puke having to come up with estimates. Software and systems development is hard. The people doing this work (not customers, PMs, management) are the ones that should be estimating. What I have seen again and again is a developer coming up with an estimate, it's too long, and some individual whacking it by half or more to meet some artificial schedule. The developers never learn how to properly estimate in this environment, so the entire system is set up to fail.

I actually consult with a well managed company. I truly mean that. Even so, they make these same mistakes. The only way customers are allowed to change the schedule is to change the priority of the features they want. They are actually starting to understand this. Even so, how many of us have been asked, "How long will this take?" with no requirements, no feature list, no h/w spec, etc?

This gets back to estimates. I've seen estimates get whacked to meet artificial delivery times (usually there is a trade show involved ) and then listen to PMs and management complain bitterly that "the development team missed their scheduled commitments" when in fact, they hit their estimate but missed management's.

This is THE great lie, and the Extreme Programming book brought it out in a simple and well explained manner. It was an epiphany to me. At the time, I was struggling with estimating projects, and the book exposed the underlying fallacies of this nonsense.

The rest of agile? all I know is that currently the agile team is growing and the development team is shrinking. That's another story...

Charlie Gilley

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759

Has never been more appropriate.

Good details and excellent background on what the real problem is.
https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/smiley_biggrin.gif

There has never been a replacement for quality, standardized software engineering practices.

Many have tried but all have failed.

Agile is merely the latest boondoggle and fad that our profession is currently experiencing.

It was a pathetic paradigm from the beginning and will always remain so...

Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com

I agree wholeheartedly. The principles found in the Agile Manifesto bear little resemblance to the resource-wasting, bloated bureaucracy of what is considered "Agile" today. Among the worst of the offenders in this current implementation is landing non-technical PMs and BAs in charge of managing software projects. Experienced software engineers can learn good project management and business processes FAR easier than non-technical business types can learn software engineering.

FWIW, if you the reader have nothing better to do, here are some Linked articles I wrote a while back that are still true today and address this topic.

Rethinking Software Development
Agile Principles from a Traditional American View
Soup to Nuts Software Development

Couldn't agree more. The customer facing side of agile with quick turnaround times and continual feedback is good. The management side is mostly crap. Pair programming? Who came up with that? That's way out there in left field. Agile is based on "collectivism" where the whole team "owns" everything which basically means nobody owns anything. When you don't have ownership for what you do, you are less likely to take care of it. Whens the last time you washed and vacuumed out a rental car before returning it? When you have complete ownership in what you do, its your baby and you will naturally do whatever it takes to make it a success. Its human nature. Developers should own the code they work on. If it breaks, they should be responsible to fix it. If its a success, they get the credit. Developers should be involved in all of the high level meetings with the customer, setting priorities, etc... In fact, there should be less project managers, more software engineer / rock star / project managers. Developers should be managing their own projects.

Heh, I'm glad that I WAS the firmware department at the places I worked. Never had to join the Agile cult.

I agree with you, aside from your point that just talking to each other is enough in large teams. From a certain team size on (maybe ~8+ programmers), I don't see how it can work without agile. In an innovative environment, where the project goals change several times over time, it's almost impossible to keep everyone heading in the same direction without any formal procedures. I also find them painful, but I see the necessity.

Can you not have a simple group meeting once a week together? Does it require Agile to MAKE you do what you should be doing anyway?

Do you need all the retro, what went right, what went wrong, what can we do better, business meetings where many are not present, stand up every day? Really?

Do we need to be herded around like cattle in order to do something we should do on our own?

Good grief. Sigh | :sigh:

It has it's place. In the right place it can work well.

My 2c. Any methodology can be made to work with the right people involved. I've seen really slick implementations of Agile that were doing great work. More often though I've seen really sick implementations of Faintly Resembling Agile (Fragile) that are like a big ship in search of an iceberg.

I think Agile is reliant heavily on the cohesion of the people and their shared vision in a way that other approaches do not suffer. And in my experience it gets worse as the team size grows.

The only other thing that I would add is that the current fad for Agile for everything is dangerous. Agile procurement, Agile quality control. . .For starters it does not fit well with fixed price solution procurements in Government.

PS: I'm a Certified Scrum Master.

There has been a lot of back and forth about Agile in here. The majority do not like it.
While this link is 6 years old, it fits best.

https://toolshed.com/2015/05/the-failure-of-agile.html

Monday Dec 13th.

Good thing I'm not superstitious ... Laugh | :laugh:

I've only got that because they are short-staffed at Herself's work - so she couldn't get to her one on the 8th and had to reschedule. So I cheekily asked if I could get mine at the same time as her since it's an 80 mile / 130Km round trip.
And they said "Yes, if you can make it for 11:20". Can we? Oh yes!

Gah! I'm actually looking forward to be stabbed with a needle ... Laugh | :laugh:

"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

Mine was two weeks ago, on Friday 13th. Big Grin | :-D

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

OriginalGriff wrote:
since it's an 80 mile / 130Km round trip.

Do you live out in the middle of nowhere? Is that really the closest you can go to get one?

In the US you can go to any other corner and get one. Even rural areas are usually closer to the vaccine than 40 miles.

1) Not quite, but close.
2) Yes.

"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

newbie_12 wrote:
Do you live out in the middle of nowhere?

There is no such thing in the UK.

If you live in the middle of nowhere in Sweden you can drive for half a day without meeting a single person.
In the UK they will have changed dialect several times in the same timespan.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

Jörgen Andersson wrote:
In the UK they will have changed dialect several times in the same timespan.

That's Italy too.

GCS d--(d-) s-/++ a C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X

I had mine in August; it's almost time for the next booster. Sigh | :sigh:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.

Lucky you. Unfortunately I started showing symptoms last week so I got tested and am positive. Luckily I am vaccinated (second shot back in May) and would have been eligible for the booster last week.

My symptoms were coughing, head congestion and mild fever but on Thursday evening I lost my sense of smell/taste. I went to the doctor the next day and got tested. Today I feel fine other than my coughing and now runny nose and inability to taste. All during this my blood oxygen level was around 95% give or take a few points.

I'm just isolating right now waiting my 10 days. Good thing I've been working from home. I don't have to worry about infecting anyone at work. Of course I'll be missing Thanksgiving day at my brother's house. Sigh | :sigh:

Right now the worst part is not being able to enjoy food. Everything tastes like... well, nothing.

Kelly Herald
Software Developer

	No - absolutely nothing to report
	Maybe. Or it could have just been the nylon carpet
	A little. (and please share the details)
	Yes, a lot. (and we absolutely need details!)
	Geomagnetic what?

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