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Is Agile Development a Failing Concept?
Nerval's Lobster writes: Many development teams have embraced Agile as the ideal method for software development, relying on cross-functional teams and adaptive planning to see their product through to the finish line. Agile has its roots in the Agile Manifesto, the product of 17 software developers coming together in 2001 to talk over development methods. And now one of those developers, Andy Hunt, has taken to his blog to argue that Agile has some serious issues. Specifically, Hunt thinks a lot of developers out there simply aren't adaptable and curious enough to enact Agile in its ideal form. 'Agile methods ask practitioners to think, and frankly, that's a hard sell,' Hunt wrote. 'It is far more comfortable to simply follow what rules are given and claim you're 'doing it by the book.'' The blog posting offers a way to power out of the rut, however, and it centers on a method that Hunt refers to as GROWS, or Growing Real-World Oriented Working Systems. In broad strokes, GROWS sounds a lot like Agile in its most fundamental form; presumably Hunt's future postings, which promise to go into more detail, will show how it differs. If Hunt wants the new model to catch on, he may face something of an uphill battle, given Agile's popularity.
There are more choices than just Agile and Waterfall.
The hell? My daily standup is 2-4 minutes. Restrospective takes 15-30 minutes, subsequent planning takes another 30-45. We do weekly sprints, so you're looking at an average worst-case of averaging 19 minutes a day. Boo-fucking-hoo.
If your standups take 2 hours, then screw that. Tell them what you did, what you're going to do, and what's blocking you. If someone wants to have a long discussion, sit back down and go to work, because the standup is apparently over. If anyone complains, tell them to take a course in scrum.
Waterfall just cannot work.
1. All the descions are taken at the time you know the least about the outcome, ie at the begining.
2. By the time you get to the end your requirements are out of date, you get the product you wanted at the start of the project not the one you need now. If you try to support requirement change all you end up doing is replanning and pushing back delivery.,
3. It was a failed methodology from the start, the original paper that started waterfall was an example of how not to write software
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I always find it funny for something named Agile and aimed at being responsive to needs that people are so "by the book" about it. I find it oxymoronic that there's "one true way" to do something called Agile.
Some employers are so by the book that they have to have a physical whiteboard with postits even though they also have to have jira and keep both those in sync. The purist agile says no remoting- face to face only, which I think is incorrect- I think "some kind of verbal or visual chat" is sufficient, but the key is communication beyond say hipchat and jira and email.
Some employers claim to be really purist about it and yet depart in significant ways. I think a lot of employers also use Agile as a way to squeeze long hours out of devs at the end of every sprint even though "purist" agile says 40 hour work week.
I generally like agile and it took a while for me to understand that MVP doesn't mean do the bare minimum for the sake of doing the bare minimum but with the idea you get it to the customer for feedback sooner and you iterate.
Once Agile values started to become embraced and a couple of new development processes came along (SCRUM, etc)
That's a nice thought, but SCRUM actually predates Agile by half a decade. SCRUM was introduced ~1995, and Agile ~2001.
Though the actual Agile techniques are much, much older. Reading the Mythical Man Month can convince you of that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Standups are the one time you're guaranteed to catch everyone on your team, so that you can't be blocked for more than a day on anyone internal - and the scrum master should be taking note of anything external your blocked on.
When scrums say more than "I'm on track, next" or "I'm blocked by X" or "I'm late, sorry", the only real excuse is that you're not using any issue tracking system for tasks, and so the 15 minutes standing around at least saves you the time to keep fiddling with tasks in a DB. If it takes more than 15 minutes, you should just walk away from the standup (I've done this before - it sends a strong signal once multiple people have the courage to do so).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.