Comments on Code Instructions: The Agile Fallacy

In my view, and that of others, the real fallacy i...

2009-06-16T18:12:49.331-04:00

In my view, and that of others, the real fallacy is the idea seemingly held by many that things such as prioritized to-do lists, iterative progress, and timeboxing are not the norm. Perhaps those who think this way represent a minority, or perhaps they are in an industry where these things are not the usual case. Regardless, the statements they make often give the impression they are doing something unusual, and I think that is what gives rise to ideas like the one proposed by Domingos.

I recently came across a blog in which the author described the application of Scrum to household chores. I shared it with others who all had the same response. They thought the idea was incredibly naive as it proposed nothing that housewives have not been doing for generations, except perhaps for the use of certain modern buzzwords. Now to be perfectly fair, the author never outright said they were doing anything novel. But if they knew it was not, why blog about it?

I've broached the subject of Agile to people in many industries, and without fail they all look at me as if I'm from Mars. Not because it's such an alien concept, but because it's not. It's what they have been doing forever. They argue that if software developers honestly think these ideas are so radical, then either these developers are living in a fantasy world or there is something very abnormal about the software industry.

I don't think that "serious" agilists pretend to h...

2009-05-05T01:26:00.000-04:00

I don't think that "serious" agilists pretend to have invented iteration. It is more the vision of new "adopters" that see agile only as a "technique", but remember that the first sentence of the manifesto is "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools "

This blog entry, and the comments on it, are thoug...

2009-05-04T05:15:00.000-04:00

This blog entry, and the comments on it, are though-provoking. I have been programming for 45 years, although more slowly now, and I have seen the rise and fall of many methodologies, and even the genesis of the breed. My view is that after a number of spectacular failures in development projects, development managers developed high-bulk methodologies as a defense against the unpredictable rate at which different programmers deliver running code, and that competent programmers periodically develop "new, improved, low-bulk methodologies" as an end-run around the barriers posed by the traditional high-bulk methodologies. I have looked these ideas more fully in a new post on my blog.

RUP isn't "overly complex," it's only as complex a...

2009-05-03T19:15:00.000-04:00

RUP isn't "overly complex," it's only as complex as you need it to be. RUP can certainly be implemented in an agile, if not Agile, manner. And I personally value agile over Agile.

I believe good software or web development comes t...

2009-05-02T15:59:00.000-04:00

I believe good software or web development comes through tested principles and setting measurable goals meeting real user needs.

Any developer 'dogma', Agile included, is nothing but a 'tool' to help get that job done. Only use Agile when it really facilitates your goals.

I don't really see agilists "claiming" we invented...

2009-05-02T14:22:00.000-04:00

I don't really see agilists "claiming" we invented iterations. If you are actually from the computer field you will know the well known fact that "Waterfall" was coined after Winton Royce's 1970 paper on software development processes. The irony being that Royce himself never advocated Waterfall and he even concluded that iterations were inevitable. So people got it all wrong since the beginning.

And even before that, Lean development - which started in manufacturing since after the 2nd World War - already had this concept. While Ford was kind of "waterfall", Toyota already was performing under iterations in its just in time concepts, takt time and so on.

You are right: this is not new at all, and I don't see agilists claiming that. What we do say is that it's been like 40 years since waterfall-based development has been debunked as absurd, but people still stick to it. Some would say that this is inspired by the manufacture world, but even that is not true since Toyota came to be like decades ago.

So, we agree: agile didn't invent iterations. Now we don't agree on the existence of a fallacy, this is a non-fact.

Which "agile evangelists" think it did? The ones ...

2009-05-02T14:20:00.000-04:00

Which "agile evangelists" think it did?

The ones *I* know readily admit the Lisp, Smalltalk, Forth, etc. heritage of iterative development.

I don't see the "agile fallacy" you're talking about.