Agile is a Sham - <AUTHOR> http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/20054342100/agile-is-a-sham <comment><USER3> I personally think Agile _is_ mostly a scam built around some very small nuggets of common sense wisdom, which has then been propagandized by legions of clueless methodology consultants to mediocre teams and management, and spun into mediocre books and conferenceware. Just my personal opinion, ymmv etc.

That said, _this_ is a badly written article which doesn't convey much useful information or convincing argument. I am surprised it is on the HN front page,leave alone being the top ranked article (at the time of writing this comment).

Agile and TDD have been exhaustively discussed before on HN and an HNSearch will bring up much better arguments, both pro and con, from people who can clearly explain their viewpoints.

<comment><USER4> True, the article is basically a rant, but I tend to agree. I've felt like the agile train left my station long ago and it wasn't for trying. After being invited to attend a free 'workshop' from one of the holiest purveyors of agile out there, I left with the feeling that it definitely was all for those who did not know how to actually 'do the work'.

The trends I've been seeing and trying to do are as follows:

* full stack responsibility. You own the task front (js/html) to back (db), including testing.

* no f-ing standups. Communicate normally with your colleagues, no prescribed check in with them.

* no iterations. Release whenever; it may sound crazy but kanban style release whenever you're ready to push features out, in my mind, is the way to go.

* engineers, again, run the company. This in my mind is the biggest thing - having those 'with power' also be engineers and the product being the most important product.

All the above are the opposite of what I've seen with the agile movement. Keep teams small, keep them close and your product will reflect that.

Another huge, HUGE thing is to get the fucking mba management types out of the office. Can't stress this enough: if you can't code, you don't belong. You're making a tech company but you don't understand the basics of how the product is made.. So, you own a furniture making company and you don't understand what glue, oak, and lathes are..? Fail.

That's my real life experience and opinions regarding agile. I've tossed away all the agile stuff for a new project I'm doing and like the poster says, it's all based on common sense. You can run your company or project any way you want. I have friends that have millions in revenue every year with their small shops and they don't do any agile stuff. Yet they're one of the leaders in their space and when my friend, the engineer ceo, told me "we have no iterations or deadlines except when it has to be done by", that was a big wakeup. I was thinking "THAT'S how I want to do things".

So, it _can_ be done. Good luck. :)

<comment><USER5> > full stack responsibility. You own the task front (js/html) to back (db), > including testing.

Unless you are 1337 with all of those you end up with silos instead of properly defined layers and reusable code.

> Another huge, HUGE thing is to get the fucking mba management types out of > the office. Can't stress this enough: if you can't code, you don't belong.

Awesome, I'll get around to telling my boss that, the very same one that hired me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised no one has brought up Steve Yegge's _Good Agile, Bad Agile_ [1], which speaks well to both Google culture and scaling (good) Agile. One of the comments on that post mentions it. It's worth reading (and being Yegge, that'll take awhile).

Agile is like anything else: some well-meaning (and arguably useful) principles that get warped by bad managers and bad companies. The natural evolution for any such idea is to turn it into an industry and there are any number of people who are willing to sell you training, lectures, books and programs for Agile (with a capital-A). You need to separate the industry from the idea.

[1]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad- agile...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad- agile_27.html)

<comment><USER7> Exactly. And note the date: 6 years ago. I think the collective wisdom has been acquired. The IT community needs to name it in a way that makes these lessons learned common enough that the next time someone is burned by Bad Agile, they won't rewrite one more iteration of this same post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's useful to distinguish big-A and small-A agile.

Big-A Agile is a management buzzword, something you can become certified in and certainly a scam.

Small-a agile is a number of mostly common sense principles on how to approach process. It is emphatically not the process itself. While it cannot be meaningfully certified, it can be taught and learned.

Someone else linked to the agile manifesto. I'm just gonna go out on a limb and paste the punchline:

 _Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan_

<comment><USER9> I haven't heard that argument before. Interesting.

For me, big-A Agile refers to the Agile Manifesto for Software Development, and is the Agile that people are talking about in posts like this. It may be a software development buzzword, and yes there are certifications and they are scams, but I find the values and principles in the Agile Manifesto to be fairly sound and relevant within the context they were first produced in, as basically a reaction to waterfall in larger companies developing business software with average developers.

Small a agile is an English word meaning quick or flexible or something.

I am not saying I am right and you are wrong, just that is how I have usually thought about it.

<comment><USER8> You can't "be" big-A Agile, it's a tool set or a check-list - but you can (and should what to) be small-a agile as a development organisation.

The reason I make the distinction is that big-A is the quantifiable bit, but you can tick all the boxes and still essentially do waterfall. Conversely, you can be small-a agile without ticking the boxes - agile isn't, and can't be, prescriptive.

If the team feels they don't need daily stand-ups, or if they want to sit down (the horror!), there is nothing about being agile that should keep them from doing that. Same goes for tests: You can worship the test coverage number obsessively, but if your assertions are pointless or missing, you won't reap the benefits. Conversely, an agile team can decide to forego tests if that's the right thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with these "only good programmers will create good products so stop with the Scrum already" rants is that in real life we have more than enough mediocre engineers and we just have to come up with best possible products with those.

I work as a quality assurance consultant. Usually companies buy my services when everything is messed up. Now if I try to solve their problems by saying "hire better engineers", nothing gets fixed. Nothing gets fixed because there is only so many good engineers available and the company usually don't have enough money to hire him/her.

But if I teach them to follow Scrum, it is really easy to add code reviews, testing (unit and functional), planned releases, etc.

It could be argued that one does not need Scrum to get those done or that it does not matter since team of better engineers will at some point do better job. But have problems in our hands right now and those must be fixed yesterday. So until some other methodology than Scrum get popular enough, we'll use that.

So in real life Scrum makes getting the best out of normal team so much easier. Sure there are always rockstars who don't need any process, but in reality you, me and most of us, are all pretty dumb and just have to live with the fact.

<comment><USER11> The other problem is that the people who write those rants are probably not half as good as they think they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the last few companies I have worked for, Agile was not lightweight, and became a significant hindrance to productivity. In fact, there was an "Agile consultant" brought in to make us more agile at one company I worked for. He ended up making our process 3-4x more convoluted and process intensive. He also succeeded in making the work not fun anymore. In my last job, "Scrum" meetings could take 30 minutes or more on many occasions, and our "sprints" would regularly change scope or be canceled mid way through.

I know that isnt Agile, but the problem is that many managers(and apparently consultants) think that _is_ the way to do it. In my opinion, work getting done is not because you implement a process or methodology. Work gets done when you have a good team in place and trust them to do their job. Many companies seem to think that they can promote a non technical person to manage a development team. The problem with this is that they have no idea how software is built so implementing a methodology that promises consistent results no matter what the inputs are seems reasonable to them.

I am by no means representative of anyone other than myself, but I find I am most productive when a) I know the problem domain inside and out b) I am given some leeway with architecture and design c) I am not bogged down in process.

As projects get larger, its not as easy to allow for those conditions, so getting smart people on board is imperative. Agile should allow for managers to get some transparency and a view into the process, but little more...

</comment><comment><USER13> Agile and Scrum have some good things going for them.

They teach developers that building things is always an iterative process. A well designed product will still require incremental on-the-fly improvements to get it right just as code does. Sometimes a design will require a refactor just as code does. Needing a 'complete' design doc before building a product is a fallacy.

They teach project managers that if they just let the designers and developers get on with it they can usually self-organise and manage their time better than if done top-down by a non-technical outsider.

They teach producers and 'product owners' that constant interference can be detrimental to a production process. Developers should be allowed to develop.

Best of all if done right they allow everyone scope to make mistakes yet still fix them and good mistakes that they can try out and keep.

However, there are downsides: scrum has no role for designers in the day-to- day production. Either they are pushed to the role of product manager or they have to work independently a sprint ahead. An ideal system would put the designers into the heart of the scrum team.

Top-down scrum is where it all goes badly wrong: producers and managers insisting that designs are complete before a line of code is created, managers taking the role of scrum-master, sprints being nothing more than waterfall milestones etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let me say this. I have found scrum in particular to be used as a management tool (report back tool), and not a developer tool. It doesn't matter where i go. It starts with the greatest of intentions, and ends up where management are sticking there fingers in the pie half way through. And by that I mean they don't use priorities on the backlog to manage the process. They use the standup meetings as a moan session when things don't go there way. To me scrum in its purest form is where the developer drives the process. Most projects will perform better if they just let them do that.

<comment><USER15> Agile _is_ a management tool. It helps manage developer time, feature bloat, organizational blocks, communication overheads and user expectations. It also helps you measure performance and identify bottlenecks in your own process. Like other comment said, it helps getting a couple things done instead of having a huge pile of stuff half done.

<comment><USER14> Look at what Agile is promising to fix. The development process not the management process. Semantics aside, I like everything you said, except to say that either the line manager is doing those things, or 'it' (scrum) is doing those things.

<comment><USER15> Managing the things I mentioned fixes a lot of problems common to broken development processes. [Insert your agile method here] provides a useful framework upon which to build a working development process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a terrible, polemic and content-free post. Please stop submitting stuff like this.

<comment><USER17> So is your comment, please stop making them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This kind of somewhat understandable but ultimately clueless ranting just tells me one thing: no way in hell I'm ever going to trust a programmer who cannot (or can not be bothered to) distinguish between marketing bullshit and the real thing.

This kind of attitude will show up in other matters, most importantly understanding what actually needs to be developed, what the priorities are and why they are important.

I'm surprised how many people here seem to be ignorant of Agile. Take for instance the certification scam accusation that is liberally thrown about: only Scrum has certification, and even that has always been controversial. As far as I know, no other Agile flavor tries to sell certification. But even so, Red Hat sells certification, does that make Red Hat Linux a scam?

There are scammers and greedy consultants in every area of IT. None of that has fuck all to do with Agile in particular. So why are people so hell bent on using this against Agile?

</comment><comment><USER19> How well a team works together depends on far more than how smart the component engineers are. One clever engineer may be sufficient for a Suduku problem, but it is a matter of scale. This fellow is basically arguing that we don't need government because people get along just fine on their own. Which is absolutely true on an individual scale, and not at all true as soon as two people live next door to one another.

In my experience 90% of software problems are social problems. He seems to care only about technical problems, and assumes those are solved by the magic of intelligence. I believe that if you can not explain to someone else how to do what you do, you aren't actually a master of your craft. Appeals to hire smarter coders sound incredibly hollow unless they are accompanied by techniques to make the average coder smarter.

There are much better critiques of Agile out there, mostly having to do with how it has been sold. I'm not sure what he thinks he is contributing to the discussion.

Any process can be harmful. It can also be incredibly useful, and the lack of process is at least as harmful as process applied badly. I recommend the book "The Checklist Manifestos" for examples. It proposes that the goal of process is to handle routine complexity and make cooperation routine, leaving human attention and effort free to focus on the actual hard problems.

</comment><comment><USER20> No. Process is important; it's necessary. There are at least two prongs to this problem: one is you can't manage what you don't measure, and process gives you a way of tracking functionality implemented, defects, defects resolved, etc. There's nothing inherent to programming that gives your manager or your team any sort of knowledge about how far along you are, or just as importantly, when you will be done. You can hack all you like and -- even if your code is visible to all -- there's no way of guessing how far along you are, or if that needs-to-be-fixed-yesterday bug is close to resolution.

The other prong to this problem is you can't remember what you don't record. Well, _you_ may have an eidetic memory, but unless the _company_ generates deliverables besides code that explain what the code does or is supposed to do, a change in team X years down the line may mean the company forgets why Joe wrote the widget wrangler in the way that he did, and accordingly the widget wrangling module becomes an unmaintainable black box. Generating these deliverables is a part of the software process, whether Agile or otherwise.

And there will _always_ be a process. This arises simply as a consequence of the fact that management needs to know how well you're doing, and if you're performing in a cost-effective manner, to many decimal places of precision. And if the process isn't agile, it could be something far less pleasant.

Agile Processes (big A) may sound scammy to you, like their proponents are trying to sell back to you shit you already know. But you only know that shit because you're a software developer. Management can't do what you do, and they're the target audience of Agile Processes like Scrum and XP. It gives them a ready-made Industry Best Practice that they can decide with confidence to adopt company-wide, with little perceived risk because it's so proven and widespread. Compare and contrast with the success of the "open source" meme in convincing companies to adopt, and participate in, free software.

<comment><USER21> No, it's even worse. You can't manage what you can't measure. And so far no one has found a metric to measure creative output like painting, writing poetry or writing software. Whatever metric you choose to measure and evaluate your team, and esp. what ever metric you reward is going to lead your team optimizing their performance for that metric.

You want to measure LOC, programmers WILL write more lines. Want to measure and reward less defects, programmers WILL create less defects etc. But will your software be sexy, appealing to users, creative, innovative, trend setting solution to old/new problem?

<comment><USER22> > And so far no one has found a metric to measure ... writing software

How about ...

* Number of new features delivered per week (and size of said features)

* Number of new users per week

* Number of page views per day

They're fuzzy metrics at best, but saying "writing software can't be measured" is just defeatism. It's not fine art, it's not a Jackson Pollock painting, it's a craft. It has utility. We can get a grasp on that. Even the pretty bits are ultimately there to make it more useful to people.

<comment><USER21> That's even more nebulous. Yes, those things are perfectly measurable, but how do you translate x number of new users per week into code?

Isn't that what software development is all about. It's about collapsing this cloud of uncertainty into concrete deterministic expression a.k.a code, which only solves the problem as you understand it.

If software development were that measurable, software developers would be as well paid as CEOs or sales people. But we are not. Because there is no way to demonstrate almost any relationship between what we do on daily basis (stare at screen and type on the keyboard as management often sees it) and sales and revenue. Some places go as far as to think of their development organization as overhead, a cost center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Process is, actually, just tax. If you need to follow a prescribed process in order to be in any way an effective coder then you are mediocre at best and so is your work and your project._

Discipline is just a tax. If you need to structure and test your code, then you're a mediocre coder at best, and so is your work and project. Just write whatever you feel like, it'll turn out ok. You're awesome, how could you possibly code anything less than exactly what the client wants?

Nonsense. Agile is a discipline, just like properly structuring your code and testing it. It's discipline at a macro scale, on the team, rather than the individual programmer. You might argue over whether its specific practices are better or worse than other methods, but arguing against _any_ development process at all is absurd.

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem with Agile development is the same problem that has affected many modern revolutions: The revolution _against_ the current ruling class gets co- opted _by_ the current ruling class[1]. The revolution then ends up changing nothing more meaningful than the colors on the flag.

Agile was supposed to help developers escape the obstacles of poor management and poor managers. It's really about developers owning the development of the software, and being given more creative authority. Non-developers play a support role, if they're present at all. That part is all fine and dandy, and it's The Good Part® of agile. Let the guys who make software be responsible for making software. Brilliant!

Managers, of course, don't want to get marginalized. If they see a movement towards Agile, they would rather bring it in themselves, so that they can control how it's implemented. And they implement it in a way that a) fits their existing biases about software development b) doesn't marginalize themselves[2]. Both of those goals are met by taking the agile process, and turning into The Agile Process (engraved on stone tablets, up on a pedestal).

Agile should be _less process_ , but when the transition is implemented by _process guys_ , it just ends up being _different process_ rather than less. And naturally, the one role in agile that ex-managers can step into (aforementioned support role) is more important in this set-up, because it's about owning and managing the process. So the revolution happens, and nothing changes. Instead of developers having more freedom, the old managers just have a new title. That title still comes with the authority to make developers fall in line, except that "in line" now refers to a different set-in-stone collection of steps and rules.

tl;dr Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[1] I'd rather not derail this thread into history and politics so I'm avoiding details.

[2] b) is actually a subset of a). One of management's existing biases is that management and process is an important part of software development.

This isn't a knock of managers; everyone thinks the same about themselves. Hell, Agile itself basically originates from developers having the same bias. They just happen to be more correct ;).

</comment><comment><USER25> "Agile is not a silver bullet" is more to the point, and applying it dogmatically can counterproductive.

But regular communication, short, well defined sprints and a prioritized backlog available to all can do wonders in terms of getting a small amount of stuff done rather than a large amount half done.

<comment><USER26> Agree with this 100%. Transparency and communication are key when you have more than one or two people on a team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, agile and TDD (not necessarily together) are good for two kinds of projects.

(1) If you're building simple web apps for small town clients in a framework like RoR, you can break things into little tasks and estimate with laser-like accuracy. This fits in great with an agile methodology

(2) If you're writing security-sensitive string parsing code or any algorithms with tricky components, TDD is a big win. When I was in grad school I converted a very slow program for solving a quantum system (worked for N=5) into a very fast program (worked for N=64) by building very detailed test scaffolding. I don't know if I could have built the fast but complicated app without the tests.

Now, I've got another app where I almost want to use TDD but I'd wind up building a whole Potempkin village of mock objects and I just can't bear the line count I'd need to first write it all, find bugs in, and then maintain.

<comment><USER28> You're wrong on both accounts:

(1) Being able to estimate with laser-like accuracy is not part of what's agile. Estimation is not part of the agile manifesto at all - Kanban for example can be done without a single estimate. It just limits the number of tasks that you have in parallel. Scrum on the other hand does deal with estimates, but it mainly postulates that you can't estimate large chunks of work at all and small chunks not necessarily correct. So there are all kinds of observed correction metrics built in that help you to get a better estimate - no one vouches for a correct one though.

(2) If you can't use TDD because you have to build a whole set of mock object you might have a tightly coupled system. Writing a test is not dead line count, it helps to formulate boundary conditions and expected behavior. It's certainly not useful for all kinds of project but it's certainly not limited to security sensitive or tricky algorithms. If the behavior is simple, then the test is simple as well. If the behavior is complicated, then the test will be as well - but at least you'll think about how it is supposed to be.

<comment><USER27> My own "agile" process for certain kinds of development involves breaking down all tasks to less than an hour and estimating time to 10 minute granularity and planning on weekly releases.

For boring web apps built on the right framework I find this keeps everybody very happy. Devs aren't chasing their tails, you can make and keep promises to the client, etc.

Of course you've got to be building the kind of app where there aren't surprises, but those exist.

As for the other project, the whole thing is a machine where you put a 600 million fact knowledge base in one end and it manufactures 'potempkin villages' (little knowledge bubbles about particular domains w.r.t a point of view) on the other end. Once it's done, I could use it to generate micro test cases for the rest of the system, but in the short term that doesn't bring in revenue or delight customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I dunno. In a way I think he is right in some ways in that most of the times people say they are doing agile or scrum it is a sham and they are not really doing agile and also it generally doesn't tell you much about how well they work.

Also I think that process can very easily get in the way. I was actually thinking maybe things would work better for small teams if you just handled everything in a group chat room with a history like campfire.

But I still have hope that someday I'm actually going to use TDD for a project and then have way fewer regressions to deal with. Still haven't had the discipline I guess to really learn and apply TDD after all these years although I have sort of done it a little a few times.

And also a few other things like short iterations and getting the simplest useful software going which I always thought were part of agile, those things help. Although it has always been a battle for me to get managers or even users to stop adding features and do an initial release so I haven't been very successful in that aspect.

I don't know if the quality the individuals on the team is everything but it is a good point that it is probably more important than anything.

I also would really like to believe that having a real QA team as part of the process would improve things, although I have never had that luxury either so it may be a false hope. But that would be something in the process category.

</comment><comment><USER30> An agile process isn't just there to manage the developers, it's there to engage and manage the customer as well.

In my experience, customers rarely know exactly what they want out of a software project, large or small. Complicated documents, produced up front get ignored because of TL;DR and projects start on faulty specifications that describe a solution to illusory requirements. So, inevitably, there will be a disparity between documented requirements and the desired outcome.

Iterative delivery - a key feature of agile as I have experienced it - <USER2> the customer multiple chances to try-out and feedback on working software along the way. Furthermore, by making the customer part of the solution early they are as instrumental as the implementers in ensuring the validity of the software and - therefore - the success of the project.

Incidentally, I think this is why many customers (internal and external) are suspicious of and hesitant to engage in a truly agile process. That is, they would become equally liable for the success of the project because of the decisions they are required to make. They are part of the solution and therefore potentially party to the blame for any failures. It's much safer for them to be more likely to fail and avoid the blame than it is to risk complicity in a failure, however less likely that failure might be as a result of the process.

What agile does that the author missed (or at least declined to mention) is that it gives a name to and formalises an approach that attempts to manage the customer as well as the implementers. It compensates for the fact that customers can't always be expected to fully understand their own requirements and for the inevitability that they change their minds.

</comment><comment><USER31> [Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional who wrote an earlier rant "Agile Ruined my Life" [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile- ruined-...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined- my.php) Also I am writing some practical how-to Agile e-books trying to undo some of the damage: <http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm> ]

Just differentiate between what Agile is and how people are pushing Agile on you. Different things entirely.

Agile is best practices around iterative and incremental development. Period. Yes, there's a manifesto and there's Scrum and all sorts of other things, but at the end of the day Agile is a marketing term. A place to go find out what people are trying in order to get better.

Two secrets here. One, team success is about 90% dependent on who is on the team. Good teams do well. Bad teams do poorly. But if you're going to have more than one team, you need some way to measure and talk about what they are doing, so you have to have _something_.

Agile -- when done correctly -- is just the minimum amount of _something_ you need to get your work done. It is the minimum amount of process. After all, it's not like you can have no process at all. Whatever you're doing already is a process.

I've seen hundreds of teams struggle with Agile, and to me the problem is that we do a really bad job of balancing the difference between "here's a best practice that worked awesome for about 80% of the teams that tried it" and "These are the rules. You must do this." In many shops, Agile is just another way of micro-managing teams, sadly.

I can't help that. I also can't help the fact that lots of folks are out to make a buck on certifications and such. I don't think that makes Agile bad. Heck, I'm not even against certifications, although I'd never get one. I just think we take things too far.

I like the idea of having a marketing blurb "Agile" where I can go to find out what kinds of new stuff is being done. It helps me pick better reading material.

The second secret is that most teams, frankly, are not that good. So you need some kind of way to demonstrate that as well. Making things incrementally and in small iterations lets you see how bad teams are early on. You fail early and often. Then at least you have a bit of a shot at trying to help.

But believe me, I feel your pain. Sounds to me like you are a lot more upset at modern marketing and management attitudes than Agile. Remember that we technical folks have a way of over-doing whatever we get into, as I was writing in my blog before your post appeared! (It's still very strange to me watching HN how the same topic comes from multiple writers at the same time) [http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-means-stop-focusing-o...](http://tiny- giant-books.com/blog/agile-means-stop-focusing-on-the-wrong-thing/)

<comment><USER32> Exactly. And this shit makes me furious.

I got involved with this stuff before the term "Agile" existed. At the beginning, it was a bunch of professionals (mostly developers) sincerely trying to find better ways of working. Extreme Programming, for example, came to be because the developers were really interested to experiment with how their team got stuff done.

It breaks my heart that in the ensuing decade it has turned into exactly the kind of bullshit, top-down, PHB-fluffing idiocy that early agilists were trying to get away from. If you look at the Agile Manifesto, the focus is supposed to be on a) people, b) shipping working software, c) collaboration, and d) being adaptable. That is sure not what it has become.

In my view, we made a crucial mistake: we didn't think about money and power enough. Now the Agile industry is 98% selling idiotic certifications and homeopathic doses of process improvement to organizations that don't really want to change anything at all.

Mad. It makes me mad. Sorry we screwed it up, everybody.

<comment><USER33> The only people that screwed it up are the ones that monetized it. They made it

a) rigid based on their definition b) defined themselves as experts in making teams agile based on their rigid definition c) charged for it

PS. These same guys, once they couldn't squeeze anymore blood out of the Agile stone, moved onto a new marketing term, "craftsmanship". They now charge the same clients, even more money, to teach them this "new way of doing it ..... right".

Plus, they make a mint on the books they hastily write and push out.

I eagerly anticipate that successor to Craftsmanship.

<comment><USER32> Depends on who you're talking about here. Bob Martin one of the craftsmanship people, is very sincere in his desire to make the field better. I'm not sure about who's cropped up lately, though.

Also, it's very, very rare for somebody to make a mint on a software book. I've talked with a number of authors, and their universal view is that writing code pays much better than writing a book. You do it because you have something to say, not because you want to get rich.

<comment><USER34> > Bob Martin one of the craftsmanship people, is very sincere in his desire to > make the field better.

Unfortunately, you can be totally sincere in your good intentions, and yet still repeatedly be wrong. When you are a high profile figure who presumes to advise others on the best ways to do their job, that makes you a liability.

It's a shame. Some of Bob Martin's earlier work exploring OO and the SOLID principles was quite decent stuff. But I think it's obvious at this point that he and several of his colleagues at Object Mentor have collectively lost the plot.

<comment><USER32> Could be. I guess I'm not aware of the repeated wrongness on ObjectMentor's part. Got links?

The big problems I saw, though, came from people who weren't particularly sincere. They were happy to sell whatever large companies were buying. E.g., two-day "Scrum Master" courses and a splash of Agile holy water to bless whatever top-down idiocy a company was already engaging in.

<comment><USER34> At this point, a comprehensive critique of Object Mentor would be more a case of writing a book than posting a few links. However, in the interests of not attacking them completely without justification:

\- Object Mentor are big advocates of XP. The _fundamental principle_ of XP is that a certain practice is good, then doing more of it must be better. There is no logic in that position at all, and it doesn't stand up to even cursory criticism. Moreover, if XP is as superior to other processes as the typical advocacy quotes and statistics imply, how come organisations using XP aren't consistently reporting dramatically better measurable results and how come so few software development groups have chosen to adopt it? Sooner or later, people notice that the emperor has no clothes. (I suspect this is why we now have Software Craftsmanship: it's a new positive-sounding but conveniently meaningless marketing term to pitch to clients.)

\- Bob Martin has repeatedly stated that anyone who doesn't do TDD is unprofessional. Safety-critical software is typically not developed using TDD; in fact, formal methods, BUFD, and other very much not Agile processes are often used in such fields.

\- Michael Feathers redefined the term "legacy code" in terms of unit tests. There are decades of research studying what actually causes a project to decay to the point that it is difficult to maintain and update. To my knowledge, a lack of unit tests has not yet been cited as a causal factor by any paper on the subject. (FWIW, I do think Feathers' book on the subject offered some interesting and worthwhile ideas, I just don't accept his premise that having unit tests is what defines whether code is legacy or not for practical maintenance/project management purposes. I think when you try to co-opt an ill-defined but commonly understood term and give it a formal definition that is very different to the mainstream concept, you lose some credibility.)

\- Brett Schuchert, a man writing a book on C++, managed to make "Hello, world" take five source files and a makefile totalling nearly 100 lines, using TDD of course.

\- Ron Jeffries. Sudoku. Probably enough said. TDD is not an alternative to understanding the problem and how you're going to solve it.

\- From a post on the Object Mentor blog, Brett Schuchert apparently advocates pair programming based on a 1975 study of something involving two-person teams, a ten-year-old study of university students, and a couple of links to secondary sources. The original research for almost every one of the primary sources he appeals to either directly or indirectly is no longer available at the cited links less than 18 months later.

\- Bob Martin thinks there are no more new kinds of programming language left to find. That's roughly on par with equating Haskell and Brainfuck because they're both Turing complete, and shows a complete lack of awareness of the state of the art.

\- When it comes to the amount of up-front design and formal architecture that makes sense for a project, the amount of retconning in recent comments from the TDD guys is laughable. There was a particular interview featuring Bob Martin and Jim Coplien a couple of years back that was almost painful to watch.

I could go on, but if that lot doesn't paint a clear enough picture for anyone reading this, I don't have a powerful enough Kool-Aid antidote to help them.

I do agree with you about the insincerity. That's worse in theory, but unfortunately it's probably no less damaging in practice.

Edit: Here are few links to support some of the points above.

<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/coplien-martin-tdd>

[http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/bobs-last- lang...](http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/agile-testing/bobs-last-language)

[http://ravimohan.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/learning-from- sudoku...](http://ravimohan.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/learning-from-sudoku- solvers.html)

<http://schuchert.wikispaces.com/Tdd.HelloWorld.Cpp>

[http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/11/09/info- please...](http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/11/09/info-please-tdd- and-pair-programming)

<comment><USER32> You start out with a giant misunderstanding, which makes it hard for me to take the rest of your complaints seriously. Extreme Programming is not an arbitrary desire to turn all the knobs you can find to 11. It started as a question: what happens if we take certain practices that are good and do them more intensely? E.g. if some testing is good, what if we test pretty much everything?

That team found that they really liked turning particular practices way up. But you can't turn all the knobs up, so you are implicitly turning others down. E.g., if you turn up iteration speed, then you are turning down the sort of heavyweight waterfall requirements process ubiquitous at the time.

So the "extreme" was a way to explore the space of possible processes, not any sort of fundamental principle. Teams trying XP are explicitly encouraged to experiment similarly. I sure have; the process we use is derived from XP but departs from it in a number of areas.

I think a lot of the rest of your points are similar misunderstandings along with some cherry picking. E.g., the OM blog post on pairing. He said that people sometimes asked him for basic background materials, so he posted some links. To go from that to "Brett Schuchert apparently advocates pair programming based on.." is either very poor reading comprehension or the act of somebody with an axe to grind.

As to not doing TDD being unprofessional, I'd generally agree. I tried TDD first in 2001, and have worked on a number of code bases since. For any significant code base that's meant to last and be maintainable, I think it's irresponsible to not have a good unit test suite. I also think there's no more efficient way to get a solid suite than TDD.

If you (or anybody) wants to discuss this further, probably better to email me; that's easy to find from my profile.

<comment><USER34> _Extreme Programming is not an arbitrary desire to turn all the knobs you can find to 11. It started as a question: what happens if we take certain practices that are good and do them more intensely? E.g. if some testing is good, what if we test pretty much everything? That team found that they really liked turning particular practices way up._

Well, of course they're entitled to their opinion, but that's all it is: an opinion. An argument that if some testing is good then test-driving everything must be better, or that if code review is good then full-time review via pair programming must be better, has no basis in logic. And those kinds of arguments go right back to the original book by Kent Beck, and they have been propagated by the XP consultancy crowd from the top right on down ever since.

IMHO, if a trainer is going to go around telling people that if they don't program a certain way then they are _unprofessional_ , then that trainer had better have rock solid empirical data to back up his position. Maybe as you say, I do have a giant misunderstanding, and in fact Object Mentor do make their case based on robust evidence rather than the sort of illogical arguments I've mentioned. In that case, I assume you can cite plenty of examples of this evidence-based approach in their published work, so we can all see it for ourselves. Go ahead; I'll wait.

 _I think a lot of the rest of your points are similar misunderstandings along with some cherry picking. E.g., the OM blog post on pairing. He said that people sometimes asked him for basic background materials, so he posted some links. To go from that to "Brett Schuchert apparently advocates pair programming based on.." is either very poor reading comprehension or the act of somebody with an axe to grind._

This is a consultant who presumes to tell others how to do their job, openly posting asking for any source material from others to back up his predetermined position, and then claiming in almost the very next sentence to favour material based on research or experience. He says that the links he gave (the ones where much of the original research is either clearly based on flawed-at-best methodologies or simply not there at all any more) are things he often cites. And he gives no indication, either in that post or anywhere else that I have seen, of having any library of other links to reports of properly conducted studies that support his position. I don't think criticism based on this kind of post is cherry-picking at all, but of course if it is then again you should have no difficulty citing lots of other material from the same consultant that is of better quality and supported by more robust evidence, to demonstrate how the post I picked on was an outlier.

The same goes for any of my other points. If you think I'm cherry-picking, all you have to do to prove it is give a few other examples that refute my point and show that the case I picked on was the exception and not the rule. If you can't do that -- and whether or not you choose to continue the debate here, _you_ know whether you can do that -- then I think you have to accept that I'm not really cherry-picking at all.

 _As to not doing TDD being unprofessional, I'd generally agree. I tried TDD first in 2001, and have worked on a number of code bases since. For any significant code base that's meant to last and be maintainable, I think it's irresponsible to not have a good unit test suite. I also think there's no more efficient way to get a solid suite than TDD._

Please note that I'm not disputing that an automated unit test suite can be a useful tool. On the contrary, in many contexts I think unit testing is valuable, and I _have_ seen plenty of research that support such a conclusion more widely than my inevitably limited personal experience.

On the other hand, I don't accept your premise about TDD. For one thing, TDD implies a lot more than merely the creation of unit tests. Among other things, I've worked on projects where bugs really could result in very bad things happening. You don't build that sort of software by trial and error. You have a very clear statement of requirements before you start, and you have a rigorous change request process if those requirements need to be updated over time. You might have formal models of your entire system, in which case you analyse your requirements and determine how to meet them at that level before you even start writing code. At the very least, you probably have your data structures and algorithms worked out in advance, and you get them peer reviewed, possibly by several reviewers looking from different perspectives. Your quality processes probably do involve some sort of formal code review and/or active walkthrough after the code is done, too.

If you came into an environment like that, and claimed that the only "professional" thing to do was to skip all that formal specification and up- front design and systematic modelling and structured peer review, and instead to make up a few test cases as you went along and trust that your code was OK as long as it passed them all, you would be laughed out of the building five minutes later. If you suggested that working in real time with one other developer was a substitute for independent peer review at a distance, they'd just chuck you right out the window to save time.

TDD is not an alternative to understanding the underlying problem you're trying to solve and knowing how to solve it. A test suite is not a substitute for a specification. Pair programming is not a substitute for formal peer review. They never have been, and they never can be.

I haven't gone into it here, but of course there are other areas where TDD simply doesn't work either. Unit testing is at its best when you're working with pure code and discrete inputs and outputs. It's much harder to TDD an algorithm with a continuous input and/or output space. Tell me, how would you test-drive a medical rendering system, which accepts data from a scanner and is required to display a 3D visualisation of parts of a human body based on the readings? Even if this particular example weren't potentially safety- critical, how would you even start to test-drive code where the input consists of thousands of data points, the processing consists of running complex algorithms to compute many more pieces of data, and the observable output is a visualisation of that computed data that varies in real time as the operator moves their "camera" around?

 _If you (or anybody) wants to discuss this further, probably better to email me; that's easy to find from my profile._

I appreciate the offer, but I prefer to keep debates that start on a public forum out in the open. That way everyone reading can examine any evidence provided for themselves and draw their own conclusions about which positions stand up to scrutiny.

<comment><USER32> _An argument that if some testing is good then test-driving everything must be better, or that if code review is good then full-time review via pair programming must be better, has no basis in logic._

That's not the argument at all. That is, as I just said, the reason they decided to _try_ that. Their reasons for continuing to do it and further to recommend it are entirely different.

 _[...] better have rock solid empirical data [...]_

You do realize that almost everything that goes on in the industry is not based on rock-solid empirical evidence, right? And also, that you're privileging an arbitrary historical accident by saying that new thing X has to have evidence when the common practice doesn't?

 _If you came into an environment like that, and only "professional" thing to do was to [...] make up a few test cases as you went along and trust that your code was OK [...]_

That is not something I have ever heard any Object Mentor person say, and it's not something I said. It's so far from what I've ever heard somebody like Bob Martin or Kent Beck say that your misunderstanding is so dramatic that I have a hard time believing it's not willful.

 _I prefer to keep debates that start on a public forum out in the open._

Well, I'm not trying to have a debate. If you'd like to have one, you'll have to do it without me.

<comment><USER34> _Their reasons for continuing to do it and further to recommend it are entirely different._

So you keep saying. The problem is, almost everything Object Mentor advocate does seem to be based on some combination of their personal experience and pure faith. I object to someone telling me that my colleagues and I are "unprofessional" because we happen to believe differently, particularly when we _do_ have measurable data that shows our performance is significantly better than the industry average.

 _You do realize that almost everything that goes on in the industry is not based on rock-solid empirical evidence, right?_

That may be so, but most people in the industry aren't telling me how to do my job, and insulting me for not believing the same things they do.

 _That is not something I have ever heard any Object Mentor person say, and it's not something I said._

Good for you. XP consultants have been making essentially that argument, in public, for many years. TDD without any planning ahead is inherently a trial- and-error approach, which fails spectacularly in the absence of understanding as Jeffries so wonderfully demonstrated. Plenty of consultants -- including some of those from Object Mentor -- have given various arbitrary amounts of time they think you should spend on forward planning before you dive into TDD and writing real code, and often those periods have been as short as half an hour. You may choose not to believe that if you wish. I'm not sure even they really believe it any more, as they've backpeddled and weasel-worded and retconned that whole issue repeatedly in their recent work. But I've read the articles and watched the videos and sat in the conference presentations and heard them make an argument with literally no more substance than what I wrote there.

You keep saying that I'm misunderstanding or cherry-picking evidence. Perhaps that is so and I really am missing something important in this whole discussion. However, as far as I can see, throughout this entire thread you haven't actually provided a single counterexample or alternative interpretation of the advice that consultants like those at Object Mentor routinely and publicly give. You're just saying I'm wrong, because, and there's not really anything I can say to answer that.

<comment><USER32> That's because you're trying to have a debate with the Object Mentor guys rather than a discussion with me. Your problem with them isn't my problem, and neither are your misunderstandings. It is not my job to argue you into a better understanding of something you clearly can't stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just because something doesn't have a name and isn't written down anywhere doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you don't like agile, it doesn't mean you have no process. It just means you are following another process. Assuming you have a project that actually involves interacting with multiple programmers, your ability to interact with them is a key part of getting the job done.

If you're a lone cowboy doing it all alone, then good for you, but please state that upfront in your blog posts about how the software world is doing it wrong so we know you are evaluating things from a very unusual position.

If you aren't a sole programmer, then you've got a process. Maybe it's better than agile processes. If so, please, tell us what that process it.

This whole article reads like a racecar driver dismissing automotive technology because the only thing that matters is the skill of the driver.

</comment><comment><USER36> The world is full of mediocre programmers, and in each cluster of mediocre programmers you'll find that they're surrounding much better programmers.

Ergo, since mediocre programmers exist, agile isn't a sham, and is necessary. QED

<comment><USER37> The notion that some 'good,' 'quality,' or 'talented' programmer is somehow entirely autonomous is entirely a fallacy. I'd trust a team of 'mediocre' programmers that follow process and get it done than place blind trust in a couple cowboys or post-docs who have some claim to genius in a prior life.

Sure, some are better than others. But to those who somehow believe that Great Programmers can do anything, get over yourselves. They (read: you) probably aren't nearly as good as you think.

<comment><USER36> So aggressive! I'll be the first to proudly proclaim that I know practically nothing, and am a terrible programmer. But I'm not mediocre. Mediocrity == doesn't know how to ask questions, decompose problems, troubleshoot or research. Calm down bud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Relevant article: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000024.html>

Of course, you need process if you really want to consistently create defect- free software: <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html>

</comment><comment><USER39> Direct quote: "Process is, actually, just tax. If you need to follow a prescribed process in order to be in any way an effective coder then you are mediocre at best and so is your work and your project."

No.

Read some history; you'll see the same arguments back years ago about processes being stupid then (80's, 90's) too.

I'm willing to accept that perhaps Agile isn't a perfect process, and that agile projects don't always work out.

However, process just means that you have a repeatable set of steps for generating a repeatable outcome. It's an absolutely vital part of every industry, from manufacturing to farming to, yes, programming.

Everything is a process; TDD is process, writing a plan for your code is process, hell, even just sitting down and hacking away and keeping everything you need in your head is a process.

When you have a team that is larger than one person, organizing that team relies on having expectations from each group in the team, and from each person in the group. That's _formalized_ process, and that's what agile is.

Summary: Opinion piece, unsubstantiated, no background context. Bleh.

</comment><comment><USER40> Thinking is hard. It seems like the cycle is a) someone thinks b) people follow without thinking c) someone realizes that unthinkingly following some process doesn't work so they debunk the theory without thinking.

So the question you have to ask yourself before you participate in b) or c) is do you have any idea _why_ or _how_ agile is supposed to help?

</comment><comment><USER41> Just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this. save your time. Just a rant with no direct point or constructive thinking.

</comment><comment><USER42> I view Agile the same way I do P90X, which if you swapped one term for the other this post would probably be just as valid. Yet, I use P90X and get good results. Is it dependent on my motivation and physical abilities? Yes, of course. Will it help an unmotivated person become fit? No, of course not. But what it does give some people is a road map to follow and a process for following it. Much like Agile does.

My team is using Agile and it's effective. It's not a silver bullet, but it keeps us on the same page for the most part and it gives the business team goal posts for getting features designed and queued up. If us developers sucked, it probably wouldn't help that. But since we're all decent, motivated workers, it has been going pretty well.

So is Agile a sham? Sure, whatever. So is P90X. I'll keep using both, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER43> I disagree with the author's opinion on processes, and I have put some of my thoughts in a separate entry here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3765693>

</comment><comment><USER44> _See, the thing is, the success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow.

The success of the non-coding part of a project is dependent on the calibre of your sales/management and how they interact with the customer. If you are trying to prescribe some rigid process, however lean, in order to make that interaction effective, then you have a customer interface problem and process isn't going to help it._

Couldn't agree more. The only thing I'd like to add is that there also must be a solid interface between sales/management and engineers.

Thanks for this.

<comment><USER23> _[T]he success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow._

And the success of an NFL team has nothing to do with process either. It's all the players. That's why they never hold practices or review footage with the coaches. Who needs set plays? Tom Brady just tells Wes Welker to go deep and get open. You guys up front block. That's it. Super Bowl. Process is for losers.

<comment><USER44> Programming != football.

<comment><USER23> True, but the argument in favor of process applies equally well to both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I've been using scrum for about ten years at several companies. Each time I do it, I explain to everyone that the process has nothing to do with getting people to be more efficient or work harder. It has everything to do with helping me estimate when stuff will get done so that I can let all the dependent parts of the company know well ahead of time.

If the work being done doesn't get re-prioritized, I can pretty accurately judge about 3 months out and very accurately judge a month out. That lets the rest of the company plan fundraising, PR, sales, etc.

This is where I disagree with the author. You do get fairly predictable output out of a group of engineers _regardless_ of their ability as long as they are consistent in their estimates for how long something will take (it doesn't matter if they over or underestimate, just that they do it consistently). You just won't like the results if they are mediocre.

I really want to stress how important the whole self-learning and re- adjustment part of the process is (if someone doesn't scream at least once during a retrospective, they're probably just going through the motions.) While I've run "scrum" for 10 years, the details of how each worked were pretty different depending on the teams involved.

That said, I tend to hire self-managing, self-learning engineers which scrum works beautifully for. I also am completely comfortable with delegating away large amounts of authority especially given the type of people I hire.

</comment><comment><USER7> Must be Wednesday.

TODO next week: Go collect all of the blog post cycles of "Agile Sucks" -> "No, agile in theory is fine, it's just marketing and implementation that sucks."

It's a full-fledged meme at this point. And I think if you distilled all of these posts down to their essence, you'd have a really solid critique and we could build some lessons learned, and the next time someone gets burned by a bad implementation of s/Agile|XP|Scrum/ maybe the narrative will change a bit from "Agile sucks" to something more productive, something closer to "there's that Agile execution thing again, and here's what I did about it."

Everything OP says is true, Agile is misapplied, overmarketed and badly executed, and much suffering in the name of "Agile" has happened.

But we need to change the story now. This same cycle of "sucks" -> "yeah but" is generating more heat than light. Time to reset and redirect our expectations to something productive.

"In time there will be a new movement which paints Agile as broken, inefficient and bad and we'll get a new brand. That's the kind of iterative development I'm looking forward to; a new target for our collective disdain ;)"

Here we've hit on something. On common refrain in anti-Agile screeds is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." And it's true, but instead of cynically setting us up for some other jaded iteration of Good Process Idea -> Marketing Scam/Bad Implementation -> Backlash, let's distill the lessons learned into something a little more focused and circumspect.

Let's not cycle through this again, please. Let's set Agile in its proper place, good stuff, bad stuff, the whole thing. And let's tell the right story that might help us stop looking to things like Agile as the One Best Way to do software and see it as the limited tool it is, dependent on many other concerns, such as quality of developer, product focus, political environment, etc. Agile was a great insight in its time, and I think the time is come for a large-scale retrospective by the community to state the lessons learned.

One iteration I would really like to see end is "Agile Sucks" -> "But Not Really". Time to move on to the next level, one that acknowledges Agile's failings but doesn't involve a wholesale scrapping of Agile's important insights.

<comment><AUTHOR> (blog author)

+1

<comment><USER7> Nice, thanks William.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I like to say to people:

"Software Engineering is an attempt of turning an art into science".

Let's be honest. Software development is an art form. Just like people form groups from quartets to orchestras to make music, so do people form groups of differing skillsets to develop software.

That doesn't mean an art is shooting from the hip. There is still tons of practice to be done, and the various skill levels of each individual determines the possibility for success.

The problem, then, is that there are not enough Bubles, Joshua Bells, Ashkenazys, etc. around to make all the software in the world. Most companies have to make do with large concentrations of amateurs led by the occasional Bieber/Gaga.

So what are all these processes then? They're essentially what companies wish to use to artificially increase their chances of success... However, manufacturing art leads to potential stagnation and also the possibility that every project that follows the same process have the same flaws (like how all pop music nowadays all sound the same).

Sadly, it'll take an extremely brave company to get artists to develop their software nowadays. Nowadays, the artists stick to developing their own products =)

<comment><USER11> Let's be honest. Software development is _not_ an art form. That's pretentious bullshit. It may have some creative aspects, but far fewer than it has aspects of craft and, yes, engineering.

<comment><USER46> To each his own =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Maybe you should go and read this again: <http://agilemanifesto.org/>

</comment><comment><USER48> _A fun anecdote is to consider the belief the TDD crowd entertained that, by creating tests for a problem you couldn't solve, you could somehow evolve a code that passed the tests and therefore solved the problem!_

I'm all for a healthy debate of TDD, but the above statement seems ridiculous to me. For me, TDD helps with two main things:

\- I specify the behavior I'm adding/changing before I implement it. This helps document the change I believe I'm making.

\- I feel more confident when making changes to a large codebase.

TDD works for some and not for others. There are very interesting arguments to be had about the subject. However, can we please stop acting as though TDD advocates view their tests as having psuedo-mystical powers to solve problems automatically?

</comment><comment><USER49> Well, yes and no, but mostly no.

Looking at the collection of things that people refer to as "Agile", some of the practices work for certain teams at certain times. Saying "its all a sham" is as much bullshit as calling Agile a silver bullet that will solve all your woes. (Just because it's not one extreme, doesn't put it at the other).

The OP calls out two practices, Scrum and TDD. I've tried "Scrum" at 3 different places, where by "Scrum" they meant "have a stand up meeting". Never worked. For that project!

However, TDD has actually been a silver bullet __for some tasks __. And on other tasks it killed my productivity.

Basically, stop thinking there are silver bullets, and figure out what works for your team and project.

</comment><comment><USER50> We use agile at my company w/ about 15 employees. We introduced it about two years ago to help focus our development process. Although I know there are some issues with agile, we've fully embraced agile by modifying our process along the way to suit our style. It has worked really well and I wouldn't change it for anything else right now. Does it produce high quality software? I agree that depends on the engineers, but it does produce a predictable process that we all are on board with. That's huge in my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER51> To me, agile is essentially common sense. sprints, story cards,scrums are not nonsense, but discipline. I don't care what these are called, but they have served as a good set of tools to bring in discipline to the team. It helps a lot, when your team is not full of self-driven, talented developers. While that may point to an issue in hiring, we all know how difficult it is to hire and retail such people.

</comment><comment><USER52> Not sure where the poster comes from.

(The poster seems to confuse Agile in "Agile is a Sham" and the Agile "industry". I can't talk about the Agile "industry" as I'm no part of it or have no contact to it, so I will concentrate on the "Agile is a Sham" part)

After introducing Agile/Scrum in 3 companies over the last 10 years, not as a consultant but as a permanent employee, I'd think it has been a success three times. Measuring success with two metrics: Predictable, ongoing results and developer happiness.

Developer happiness in agile usually comes from calming down the fury of requirements and wished for features. Sprints do enable developers to focus for 2-3 weeks on one topic instead of being pushed to the most urgent topic of the day by management. Happiness also comes from communicating and working and feeling as a team.

I assume the poster has - if he has - a different agile experience. Perhaps he's not a team person or uncomfortable with coordinating and working with others. 10% of the developers I've worked with just don't feel right with agile, it's not their thing. They should not try to adapt to agile from my experience, as it does not work. Better to find a non agile environment that does work for them.

From asking developers after agile introductions we had >90% approval rates on the question "Would you like to go back before agile?" and "Would you like to have a different development model?"

Scrum in particular is different from, e.g. XP. It focuses on process and - deliberately - says nothing about engineering practices or craftmanship. Coders are free to chose those for themselves. Some struggle on this or think they don't need to have them just because Scrum doesn't prescribe those. Some think Scrum is sh* as it does not talk about engineering practices or developer quality. But this is intentional.

Scrum will not make development "work" with bad developers. But it will make good developers work smoother together and make them - if they are team people - more happy from my experience.

One final note: Some people here agree that Agile is a Sham and does not work, then citing examples of managers/scrum masters that deliberately did not follow Scrum. Following Aristotelian logic at least this does not make sense.

A final final note: I got a very fine and tasty chocolate cake from my current team for birthday, so I might not be doing things that wrong ;-)

</comment><comment><USER53> Agile may well be a sham, but this statement:

 _the success of the coding-part of a project is dependent on the calibre of the engineers doing that coding and not the process they follow._

seems to me obviously untrue, for >3 engineers, and the larger that count gets, the more process you need. As an engineer I find that statement very appealing, but experience suggests it's off base.

</comment><comment><USER54> "thats SCRUM and TDD and all the rest; it is all those new ways of managing development projects"

TDD is a style of developing and nothing to do with management. Anyone who has worked on something more than a trivial size app knows how useful having a decent set of automated unit tests are. Anyone who dismisses this as a "management scam" is fooling only themself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you parsed the first line... now please read the rest of the article ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That should be clear to anyone that has even a little mathematical/computer science training.

Anyone that says you can follow some process to ensure success is effectively telling you they have implemented artificial intelligence that simulates a production line designer and to be able to do it by using humans pushing bits of paper around as their computer.

<comment><USER16> > Anyone that says you can follow some process to ensure success

I'm going to argue this on both of its implications.

Firstly: Agile is not about ensuring success. It's about greatly increasing the chances of success, and minimizing failure from fallout. No amount of process will rescue you from truly dreadful technical team, but so what? Plenty of processes will almost guarantee failure with the best tech team and will in the world.

I'm going to go for the assumption that you knew that already, though, and are attacking the idea that a management-related solution can help in the solving of technical-related problems.

Take a look at a modern hospital, and you will see layer upon layer of 'management' solutions to support medical problems. Prescriptions are checked by the doctor, checked by the pharmacist, and then checked by the nurse. Do hospitals throw these rules away with sufficiently good doctors? No. Do hospitals do this because they think their doctors are shit? No.

Agile can be a highly effective management solution for supporting technical development. I know this because it has been for me, on many occasions, with many different teams, in many different settings. I've also seen it badly implemented to the point where it's an impediment to teams, but ... so what? That's a risk with any process.

<comment><USER21> Agile and other processes go much much further than your contrived example of checks and balances in a typical hospital. It would be like hospital directly interfering into the daily doctor/patient interaction or say stipulating that no surgery can be longer than 2 hours. You want to do 9 hour heart transplant surgery. Sorry, can't do that. Break it up into 2 hour chunks and measure progress after each to make sure you are going in the right direction.

This is why agile is like religion. It is so vague and so thinly disguised into general meaningless correct sounding "principles" that it can be anything to anyone.

<comment><USER28> You're messing up agile and Scrum. Scrum has the restriction that every task has to fit within a single iteration. And even with scrum, that limit is self- proscribed. If you regularly have tasks that dont fit in a single iteration and you can't cut those down to smaller tasks then you're free to choose longer iterations. Scrum just says "make iterations, measure progress during iterations to get an estimate how much you can fit in the next." It's like doctors measuring how long they usually need for heart transplant surgery and applying that knowledge to the operations plan for the next week. I'm sure they do. And I'm sure they limit the time they have in the operation room and won't schedule a non-critical long operation at the end of a packed day. (I actually dated a doctor for 6 years and they surely did - apart from working tons of overtime and other unsensible things)

<comment><USER21> I'm not really confusing the two, I know perfectly well the distinction. However, agile is usually sold exactly like that, as a solution that will improve/solve problems.

Generally, few teams in any organization have so much autonomy to choose their own process. If they did and they decided on their own to do some kind of agile, so be it. But agile is usually imposed externally (because it's in currently) but so is any other process. By the way I'm not criticizing agile per se, I'm criticizing the idea of process as solution.

<comment><USER28> But then your issue is not with "agile" or "scrum", it's about how people abuse the notion of agile or scrum. It's the same with every other tool, programming language or process. They get abused by people pushing their agenda.

I've seen organizations that started calling their lack of planning "scrum" because that sounded better than saying "d'oh we just make up our mind on what to do every couple of days." But that's not scrum or agile and it's not the fault of people applying or promoting proper agile techniques.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This quote summarizes how terrible the article is:

> If you need to follow a prescribed process in order to be in any way an > effective coder then you are mediocre at best and so is your work and your > project.

</comment><comment><USER56> I try to emphasize the agile principles. I think there is a lot of wisdom there. The most important: "Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility"

</comment><comment><USER43> This blog post offends me a little bit. The post screams hey, I am a cowboy programmer, and it almost implies that if you employ processes then you are stupid.

In this day and age, I would have thought finding the right tool for the right job is common sense. Apparently not.

Agile, among many other things, is not a silver bullet - it never was and it never will be. The key thing is to experiment and find what works for you, your team and your company. Most software projects are done in a team environment - putting a bunch of talented developers and designers together actually isn't as simple as many seem to think. One example is right out of that original blog post:

> Given that I am not a fan of prescribed process as the solution to our > problems, you can infer my opinion of the general quality and effectiveness > of those programmers who teach these courses.

From that attitude, I can already see that he is an interesting developer to manage.

A team needs to function efficiently as a team. Having one or two ace developers aren't going to help a lot if they can't get along with the others.

Not to mention that people have spent time and effort proving that techniques such as TDD work for certain projects [1].

As many things in life, there are always people who try to take advantage of others. No doubt there are questionable 'agile consultants' who try to make a fortune out of uninformed clients. Just because some people aren't using agile effectively or even correctly, doesn't mean agile itself is a sham. Developers constantly make mistakes and write shitty code - should we say all the programming languages out there are a sham?

Keep an open mind is important, and a lot of times even necessary. To dismiss agile all together is in my opinion childish, and offensive to others who try to improve things and create more value.

[1] [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/news/features/nagappan-1...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/news/features/nagappan-100609.aspx)

Originally posted at <http://fredwu.me/post/20058808238/agile-is-not-a-sham>

</comment><comment><USER57> "buzzword-compliant" that's a good one...lol

</comment><comment><USER58> I do think think that there's a combo of simple techniques and rules of thumb, that, taken together, yield better results, with less ceremony, than Agile. And certainly far better than Waterfall, in the general case.

That combo (in my judgement) includes: iterative development, risk-driven prioritization, KISS/YAGNI, note-taking, scripted automation, CLI bias, FOSS, backups, version control and RDD (README-driven development). And several more, but these are among the biggest.

Because you don't necessarily need tests. You don't necessarily need pairs. You don't necessary need cards, or standup meetings. You don't need big upfront design. But you do need to produce working code. You should provide enough documentation to help you remember how things work and why, and bring new team members up to speed and/or project inheritors, and you _ought_ to be flushing out assumptions or minimizing your biggest risks as early as you can, when there's still the most time to fix things, workaround, or abandon an approach entirely. These are rock solid, universal patterns I've seen over the decades. And they apply to small projects and large. Solo rockstars, small teams, large, etc. Independent of tech mix and software types.

And yes, ultimately the quality of people you have is the most important. They drive everything else: the choice of technology, tools, architecture, prioritization, morale, pace, resilience, etc.</comment>


Show HN: US doctors sorted by their Opioid prescription count - <AUTHOR> https://www.opendoctor.io/opioid/highest/?hn=2 <comment><USER2> It looks pretty cool (I'm not in the US but it's still interesting data to look at). Not to nitpick but I feel like the data could be formatted slightly better, like spacing in the "TotalClaimCount" and "OpiodClaimCount" text, and removing the trailing decimal.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey

This side project opendoctor.io is about exposing more information about doctors. This is our second attempt to post this data. The first try hit the top page of HN and combined with Reddit the site melted. The link was removed from many networks.

This list of doctors ordered by opioid data is just to expose cms.gov data in a different way. We are in no way shaming doctors or have this kind of agenda. The _type_ of doctor should be considered when viewing this data.

We found the data shocking. Here it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very cool, but the first thought that came to mind, was if I would love this tool if I was hooked</comment>


Small screens better than large and/or dual screens? - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2011/09/meticulous/ <comment><USER2> I found that when coding I'm most productive on my 12" laptop. But I use workplaces a lot to organize all my open applications. And a keyboard-driven interface (ratpoison).</comment>


WantRemoteJob: Burning $6K Building a Failed Job Board - <AUTHOR> https://www.failory.com/interview/wantremotejob <comment><USER2> Yep, the bogus job listings killed this one.

It is amazing how New York State's job board is crammed with Java programming jobs in Syracuse that are really C++ jobs in Atlanta, etc.</comment>


Ask HN: Useful holiday gift ideas for entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> With the holidays approaching, I'd like to make useful gift for entrepreneurs, sidepreneurs and the likes. Would love help finding things besides the usual books, thanks! <comment><USER2> Real estate.</comment>


Facebook to examine your social network on behalf of lenders - <AUTHOR> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=9100400.PN.&OS=PN/9100400&RS=PN/9100400

<comment><AUTHOR> "In a fourth embodiment of the invention, the service provider is a lender. When an individual applies for a loan, the lender examines the credit ratings of members of the individual's social network who are connected to the individual through authorized nodes. If the average credit rating of these members is at least a minimum credit score, the lender continues to process the loan application. Otherwise, the loan application is rejected. "

<comment><USER2> While IANAL, I am fairly familiar with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). This would seem to be completely illegal under FCRA as only those with a "valid need" are allowed access to your file. Depending on how this is done it could also be significantly damaging to an individual's social network if the inquiries made are "hard inquiries" as those directly affect an individuals score for a period of two years. (source: [https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/pdf-0096-fair- credit-r...](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/pdf-0096-fair-credit- reporting-act.pdf))

Additionally, I know of two people directly in my circle of friends who have had their identities stolen in the last couple years. As part of that I know from talking to them their credit took a significant hit and they have been working to clean it up. While this patent claims to take the average, that average can be directly impacted by something like identity theft if the sample is small.

I believe a better credit scoring method would be to utilize bills and banking that are paid more often, yet not reported to agencies. For example, I pay my rent, cable, cell phone bill monthly. I also keep a balance in my bank account for rainy days. On the other hand, I only have one credit card and only use it in extreme emergency and rarely have a balance on it. My credit score is good, but could be better because of this. I would rather be judged on the bills I pay monthly rather than the bills I pay rarely. The irony of things like rent, cable, cell phone, etc... is that they don't report unless it goes to collections. There should be an "all or nothing" law. If you don't report timely payments you can't report untimely ones. That to me would be a better use of the credit reporting system.</comment></comment>


Private Intel Firm Buys Location Data to Track People to Their 'Doorstep' - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qj454d/private-intelligence-location-data-xmode-hyas <comment><USER2> These same guys ran "BorderlessInternet" (webarchive: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190216104033/https://borderles...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190216104033/https://borderlessinternet.com/l/lp/index.html)), a DNS geo-unlocker popular a few years back to watch content from other countries (like on Netflix).

Goes to show that you can't assume how benign a company on the internet is going to be later on...</comment>


Max Levchin's Affirm Raises $275M to Make Loans - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2015/05/06/max-levchins-affirm-raises-275-million-to-make-loans/ <comment><USER2> > Affirm makes an assessment of creditworthiness based on a person's name, > email, mobile number, birthday and the last four digits of his or her social > security number, as well as behavioral factors like how long he or she takes > to remember all that information. If that combination doesn't quite add up > to a loan, Affirm may also ask borrowers to share information from other > online sources, like a GitHub coding profile or a savings account that shows > cash flow history.

It's going to be interesting to see how these lenders show compliance with various aspects of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

The latter, for instance, prohibits lenders from denying credit on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, marital status, etc. But it's possible some of the data points used by these lenders will turn out to be proxies for these attributes. There is already a lot of discussion around how lenders are using "big data" and the associated potential pitfalls[1][2].

[1] [http://www.microfinancegateway.org/library/big-data-big- disa...](http://www.microfinancegateway.org/library/big-data-big- disappointment-scoring-consumer-credit-risk)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/blog/ftc-needs-make-sure-companies- aren...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/ftc-needs-make-sure-companies-arent-using- big-data-discriminate)

<comment><USER3> There are two scenarios: Someone whose FICO score indicates more risk than Affirm's algorithm, and someone whose FICO score indicates less risk than Affirm's algorithm.

Affirm chooses a rate based on its algorithm's prediction, and I believe worst case just offers standard FICO-based rates... because it has a slightly different business model, it has no incentive to ding customers with a $15 fee if they pay the third payment three days late.

<comment><USER2> You're oversimplifying the issue here. The point is that Affirm is apparently using an amalgamation of potentially thousands of data points to make decisions about creditworthiness. Some of these data points, including name, email and mobile number, as well as behavioral factors, could very well prove to be proxies for characteristics which the law prohibits lenders from using to make credit decisions.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. At some level things like income could be considered a proxy as well... arguably the absence some of the more stringent consumer lenders, like Chase, on one's credit report might predict membership in a disadvantaged group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes let's make it easier for youngsters to get themselves in the hock for that hit of instant gratification. Get 'em on the never-never instead of teaching them to save.

What I'd like to see is a disruption to banks to encourage people to save properly, by integrating proper budgeting and accounting into the bank account itself. I.e. walling money that is allocated for future expenses such as insurance, utilities, presents etc. On the other hand with no extortionate fees for going overdrawn. I'd love to see something like that.

<comment><USER5> Serious question: Why would any financial institution implement something that will reduce their revenues?

Followup question: How would a company be able to come in and offer what you describe and offer users savings, and take a cut for themselves along the way, so that the users and the new company wins, while the incumbent banks lose?

<comment><USER4> Good question, one I was thinking myself!

Some banks offer something a little bit in this direction (at least in the UK and Australia). I have heard of banks with 'savings pots' and online saving planners.

For a bank it is probably good for them if you save. Eventually you will spend the money and in the mean time the saved money makes them money because (due to how the banking system works).

The way I can see this playing out is based on consumer demand. Banks have little in the way of genuine USP. I mean they all pretty much offer the same service and must compete on service, interest rates, fees, branding, reputation etc. So offering a way to help people save could be a good USP for the right kind of bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >>..last four digits of his or her social security number, as well as behavioral factors _like how long he or she takes to remember all that information_. If that combination doesn't quite add up to a loan,...

What I find really frustrating with most of these fintech companies is that they claim they use all kinds of data. But they don't really disclose whether this is used for 'underwriting' or 'fraud'. When it comes to underwriting there are specific FCRA guidelines on reason codes. For example, if they decline credit to a consumer because s/he did not type in their address fast enough, they need to tell them that. That would make for a good sound bite for the company.

Also, what if disabled people cannot type fast enough? That seriously touches on discrimination. Too bad CFPB is not going to care about these companies until they get to $10Bn in loan size.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a hard time believing that Github commit history actually factors into the loan process. Is the typical customer of a service like this likely to be a programmer, let alone even know what Github is? Also, is there data that shows that someone with a long commit streak is more creditworthy than someone without a Github profile?

<comment><USER8> Presumably, Affirm is an application of the same "all-encompassing many- sources-as-possible Bayesian-analysis engine" behind both Paypal's anti-fraud and Palantir's anti-terrorism technology. As such:

> Also, is there data that shows that someone with a long commit streak is > more creditworthy than someone without a Github profile?

That data doesn't exist; the precise job of this sort of correlation engine is to create it. In credit analysis, you _start_ with a decent credit-worthiness model of all your customers—derived not from predictions, but from how people with a given feature-set did historically. Then you go looking for new feature datasets to incorporate into your model which decrease its RMSE at predicting split-subsets of your outcome data.

Github commit history could easily be one of these. I would guess it would be a good prediction of both average employment tenure, and of the Big 5 Conscientiousness personality trait.

But I don't have to be right—I just throw the feature-set into the engine, and it either finds signal in it and turns up its weighting in the model, or finds that it's noise and turns it down to zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm kind of curious - is this new to the US market ? There was Paypal BillMeLater, etc. In India - we have something called EMI (Equated Monthly Installments) which a lot of credit card companies do for certain online purchases (like mobile phones, etc.)

what exactly is new here ?

</comment><comment><USER10> The article claims that credit assessment is partially based on _"..behavioral factors like how long he or she takes to remember all that information.."_. Is data entry latency being used as a proxy for human memory latency?

<comment><USER3> It's just kitchen sink AI applied to as much data as possible, and two plays: 1) a trustworthy lender that doesn't short-term maximize, and 2) in some cases a better rate due to the AI's data-driven prediction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This but for small business loans instead of consumer product debt.

<comment><USER12> [https://www.fundera.com/](https://www.fundera.com/)

<comment><USER13> Basically, we are trying to do what Kayak, Priceline and sites alike did to travel agents, but for loan brokers in the alternative lending space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is this different then PayPal Credit (formerly billmelater)?

<comment><USER15> [https://xkcd.com/918/](https://xkcd.com/918/) , but with PayPal in place of Facebook?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if the interest is charged from day 1.

<comment><USER3> By law it is mapped to an APR which is disclosed to the customer, but there are typically no late fees or other (typical) penalties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Because of incumbent banks' endless surcharges, late fees and other abuses, "there's room for a product by young people for young people," Levchin, 39, said in a phone interview this week. "That's what Silicon Valley's good for, and that's what we're doing."

Levchin is not young, so I guess his startup is DOA.

</comment><comment><USER18> Levchin _must_ have been having the reporter on. This is not serious.

 _based on a person's name, email, mobile number, birthday and the last four digits of his or her social security number_

Onomancy, hotmailancy, astrology, and numerology, respectively. Ok I made up hotmailancy, but really. He just needed to add tiromancy and they could adopt Wallace and Grommet as their spokespersons.

<comment><USER19> Those form the primary keys to access your credit record, they aren't going to be getting much data from them by themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _"There's an unbelievable amount of information available on American > consumers — so it's not exactly Affirm that you should be freaked out about. > Having said that, we're probably some of the most ethical users of such > information."_

Rationally speaking, how is his "trust us" remark any different from the US government NSA spying program's "trust us" remark?

<comment><USER15> You choose to do business with Affirm in order to get something from them that you deem valuable enough to let them gather information about you, and they tell you that up front.

You don't choose to do business with the NSA, you have no say in whether you consider their "product" worth the cost, and they cover up their own activities.

<comment><USER20> > _You choose to do business with Affirm in order to get something from them > that you deem valuable enough to let them gather information about you, and > they tell you that up front._

True. But that makes the business model more compelling. It doesn't negate the fact that it takes just one bad actor at Affirm to screw that trust up (just as easily as it takes just one bad actor at the NSA to screw their trust up).</comment></comment></comment>