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Why does that sound dirty? 
Software Zen: delete this;
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And it is a training excercise, setting expectations, your client will now expect such performance every time. I am of the belief that you should only exceed expectations by a minimal amount then when you hit a nasty you have some leeway.
After 14 years with the one manager I eventually had to ignore his deadlines as they were too unrealistic. A manager/client will ALWAYS take advantage of excessive deliverables, it is their job!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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This client is an electrical engineer, and we collectively are developing a product for another party.
He's very reasonable, and my pace has consistently been really good because I always give myself lots of padding. I estimate what it takes a typical developer because frankly, I don't know how else to estimate myself, but I also consistently and profoundly outperform my estimates.
That said, I've been clear with my client that my estimates are what they are based on experience. He seems to respect that. And we're not under collective pressure because the end end client doesn't have much in the way of deadlines - they just want to see progress, and that's easy.
Real programmers use butterflies
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Lucky you...
Nice to find the exception to the rule 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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honey the codewitch wrote: It has been a good week so far, and it's only monday. I may have time to write another CP article after all.
Don't say the Q word.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Agile has been praised in the IT world almost as a religious cult; and a cult it is. Those managers who buy into this IT kindergarten principle have created an increase in IT costs that wouldn't make sense to those who see it for what is it - a huge time waster that can be replaced by being accountable for your work.
Furthermore, paired programming has certainly been curtailed because of the push to work from home. Yes, virtual meetings can allow the process to take place, but now in a more cumbersome way.
I say this because I watched a company I worked for go from getting praises and glory emails from the business partners to silence, crickets. Business meetings that turned into an hour long dead silence, or worse, many that did not even show up, or those attended became much more muted or even silenced; afraid to push back on the nonsense of it all.
We went from cubes to cubified areas, to picnic tables where noisy phone conversations, casual chatter, and people shuffling around the room, reduced concentration to a trickle. With the meeting schedules, you are lucky if you get 2-3 days of work done a week. Multiply this times the number of days for the project to complete and you get into a real problem of proving that the expense is truly worth the time.
I won't even get into the paired programming philosophy, where you have just doubled the cost of development on an on-going basis.
Projects that took several months to complete now take a year or more. Anyone with any common sense simply cannot justify the added time and expense that is supposed to be offset by the claim to reduce scope creep and code errors.
IT groups who push back and slam the door on businesses who attempt to add additional functionality many times end up losing in the end as being inflexible.
Agile preachers will produce data and charts pointing to how you will really save time by suffering through all this. Large sessions are put on by Agile evangelists praising the Agile gods for giving us this process.
This is especially true of projects where only 1 or 2 people work on it. While I would admit that the IT groups in a project that requires more than 3 people need to have meetings to make sure everyone is on point, it does not need a full blown carnival of meetings and daily stand-ups to accomplish this.
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Wrong forum. Make it a blog post.
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Our team went through the same pain years ago, when consultants in the US tricked convinced management to go this route. So we followed the rules until the deadlines got too near, when we were told to revert to our normal mode of working, and get the job done.
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: o we followed the rules until the deadlines got too near, when we were told to revert to our normal mode of working, and get the job done.
That's funny. You were less agile with Agile, but more agile without it.
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That's what I told my management when we were told we had to start doing (sorry) Agile.
Me: "We're already Agile, have been since the beginning of the project."
He: "Oh, but we'll use Scrum."
Me: "We looked at Scrum, and adopted a few of their ideas, but our project isn't suited to Scrum. Scrum would slow us down."
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raddevus wrote: You were less agile with Agile, but more agile without it.
What this highlights is that whenever there is a Hot New Topic in town, it takes on multiple meanings:
1. The original meaning, which was usually a bottom-up, emerged kind of way in which developers, through trial and error, came up with a fruitful way-of-work that was a natural fit to them. In this case it was "agile" (no capital used), agile, as in, agility, flexible, to-the-point, and additionally to that, a team where members would operate in mutual trust and a shared understanding of the job at hand which turned out to be pretty darn effective.
2. The way it was landed into the belief system of a management party (colloquially referred to as "the boss"). This is no longer a first-hand experience and loses its initial authenticity and it much depends on a kind-of self-discipline exerted by the aforementioned manager, in how authentically and truthfully they process whatever information comes to them.
Now, it so happens that the position of manager is a major attraction to those individuals who have a combination of, say, being verbally apt, but factually feeble, and shall we say, gullible, or sometimes, just short-sighted. It's not hard to imagine how a fad can grow out of proportion in such hands.
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I've mentally broken it into four five levels:
1. agile
2. Agile
3. "Agile"
4. Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!!!
5. The Madness of Cthulhu
Sounds like he's somewhere between 4 and 5.
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I saw a single team that used the Agile methodology do great work consistently for several years - I suspect it is because the leader is skilled and capable enough to make any kind of methodology work.
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
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Agile is fantastic and the most successful way to go that I have seen in all my years. Small businesses were already doing Agile before Agile was even a thing.
But pair programming is all kinds of wrong, I'll agree to that.
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The group I was in was doing Agile already, but without the kindergarten classes.
But since pair programming IS part of Agile, not practicing it means that one is not doing pure Agile.
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Member 14840496 wrote: it means that one is not doing pure Agile.
No. There are lots of flavors of Agile.
Regardless, take what is good and works for you from Agile and go with it.
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This (in everything & in all ways)!!
newbie_12 wrote: Regardless, take what is good and works for you from Agile and go with it.
Nailed it!
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And where did you get this strange idea that pair programming is required for agile?
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Because it was forced on us by management.
I think Gerry Schmitz's response sums it up quite nicely.
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Your problem is not agile. Your problem is bad management.
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Interesting but the problem here is that the manager was also an Agile instructor/guru/etc.
Again, I will defer back to Gerry Schmitz's response - it applies here.
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Huge difference between being a good Agile instructor and being a good dev manager.
The former requires good speaking skills and good knowledge of the material.
The latter requires good listening skills, a great BS filter and the ability to herd cats.
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