Agile Software Development?

[DWSmith]

Have any of you developed software in an agile development environment? What is your opinion of it?

 

[WarlockBob]

Hey there - have worked in a few different forms of Agile, and am currently a software engineering manager helping my company along the path to something utilizing Agile practices.

With my professional hat on - it's got some pretty good perks when compared to the waterfall-style SDLC type approach. When teams are organized well, with strong developers, project managers, and clear product vision involved, Agile can be a ridiculously efficient beast for churning out products, especially when it comes to iterative design principles and incorporating user feedback directly into the cycle.

With my professional hat off - there's some pretty big caveats to the Agile approach; namely, getting the higher-ups that see the term "Agile" and decide they want the new shiny implemented in their company. For one, there is no singular Agile approach for any organization, or team, for that matter. The strengths with Agile come from a pretty strong sense of self-ownership, self-organization, and team cohesiveness. The process only works when everyone is bought in, but even so you have to find what works for your organization. I've seen a lot of organizations go the approach of "we have to use Agile for everything", including daily standups, full retrospectives, etc. etc. That's not necessarily a bad approach, but if an organization has never used Agile before, it can be absolutely demoralizing to (especially senior) developers, and add a ton of overhead they're not used to. If teams have some level of self-organization on how they want to use Agile, there's generally better acceptance across teams for it. On top of the organizational and psychological effects of Agile overall, there's also the tooling aspect - frankly, most of the tooling sucks. Atlassian makes cool tools, but I'd bet a beer any day that one of the biggest drawbacks and complaints you'll hear from teams is "Jira absolutely sucks, I hate it and everything about it".

TL;DR: Agile is... fine, for the most part - as long as expectations are set within an organization on what it is, how it'll be utilized, and some autonomy for teams to organize around what works for them. If not everyone is bought in, it's gonna be like pulling teeth. Productivity-wise, it makes sense for a lot of web development, SaaS providers, those types of things, but it can be trickier for embedded devices, upgrading legacy applications, etc.

If you have more targeted, specific questions or anything please feel free to ping me.

 

[Brewdude]

Well whatta ya know - welcome back Bob!




Cheers,

RR

 

[DWSmith]

Bob,

Your take on it is pretty much on the mark with what I've seen. It's not a single method but an attempt to encompass as many practices as possible and lump them into a pile called Agile. I've been in software development for nearly 45 years and I have yet to see anything new in Agile except for some new tools. I've seen ways of doing things that were around 30+ years ago.

I think it's another fad that management has adopted thinking it's the proverbial silver bullet to solve all of their problems.

I'm not saying it won't work. I'm saying that pieces/parts of it have always worked, some company has come along and claimed those pieces and parts to be under the Agile umbrella, and now they're selling certifications, training, and consulting services to help companies adopt the Agile 'package of goods'.

Even some of those who were involved in writing the Manifesto of Agile Software Development are claiming shady intentions.

Thanks for your post!

 

[WarlockBob]

You definitely said it more succinctly than I could have - you're right on the money. It's definitely all about the sales pitch: nothing in it is new, but if we repackage it and slap a new name on it, well by golly we've got ourselves some waterfront property in Arizona.

I do fully believe in the Agile Manifesto, and I believe those folks had the right idea (for the most part), but yes the industry cropped up around Agile is just... Wild. Makes me wonder why I did so much work as a developer when I could have just branded myself as an Agile guru and really made the big bucks!

 

[Timbo]

Up until last year I was an admin in an agile software development team working in a government department. They were brilliant devs who would have earned at least double what they were getting in govt but liked the perks. Their software is rock solid much more so than anything that the previous waterfall teams produced, I have little to no problems reported in their software, no rebooting servers or reseting web sites, manual loading of imports/exports etc. compared to the older methods. Maybe these guys were just really thorough but their stuff is almost bullet proof. The main thing I've had to admin on their old stuff is updating active directory accounts used by the apps which were using shared accounts which should not have been used when a specific service account should have been.

I still admin these apps but the team all took redundancies when offered as the terms were good. The director who did the culling is now severely regretting doing so as the current devs from India are absolute idiots who can't read a requirement sheet without getting it all back to front.

Also they made sure they logged thoroughly so that any problems are easily fixed.

Oh and Bob, if you're up for it, we're starting our bombing runs again if you want to participate. Official 2022 Bombing Squadron Sign Up Has Begun!

 

[WarlockBob]

Up until last year I was an admin in an agile software development team working in a government department. They were brilliant devs who would have earned at least double what they were getting in govt but liked the perks. Their software is rock solid much more so than anything that the previous waterfall teams produced, I have little to no problems reported in their software, no rebooting servers or reseting web sites, manual loading of imports/exports etc. compared to the older methods. Maybe these guys were just really thorough but their stuff is almost bullet proof. The main thing I've had to admin on their old stuff is updating active directory accounts used by the apps which were using shared accounts which should not have been used when a specific service account should have been.

I still admin these apps but the team all took redundancies when offered as the terms were good. The director who did the culling is now severely regretting doing so as the current devs from India are absolute idiots who can't read a requirement sheet without getting it all back to front.

Also they made sure they logged thoroughly so that any problems are easily fixed.

Oh and Bob, if you're up for it, we're starting our bombing runs again if you want to participate. Official 2022 Bombing Squadron Sign Up Has Begun!

Oh wow, that director definitely made a big mistake... yikes.

Thanks for the bombing run lead, I'm definitely back in!

 

[urbino]

I'd agree with everything already said. I'm the lead architect in our shop, and we've been making the same transition over the past couple of years. It's a better methodology, but getting there is not easy. Even in a small company, it takes a lot of effort -- and repetition -- to turn momentum in a different direction. And there's a million little questions that have to be worked out.

I'd also say the value depends entirely on how good the people writing the user stories are. If you want to get something done in a 2-week sprint, clear requirements are essential.