Does Agile Methodology work for you?
I’m trying to understand how effective Agile methodology is for tech workers. This includes sprint planning and Kanban boards for both individual contributors and managers, as well as SWEs, SREs and Operations staff. How much Agile is enough and how much is too much? Please share your thoughts. Thank you.
Agile is really the best methodology. I've also known no other.
You need to have people that are comfortable with ambiguity and do more than just meet acceptance criteria.
I've been on and off agile teams. Totally team dependant. I'd say in big teams where engineers are less competent it's probably good and provides good visibility to outside project management. In small teams <= 6 of competent people it's a red tape bs. By competent I mean if you give an open ended assignment to build something they will design for scale, try to put themselves in consumers' shoes and get clarification on edge cases.
I definitely agree with you, the red tape BS for well-rounded, competent engineers.
Agile simply means “common sense”.
Care to elaborate? I’m not sure if you’re advocating for or against agile methodology and in what context. Are you saying that common sense is ubiquitous?
Well ok since you asked. The whole notion of Agile itself means “try to do the right thing”. This means that Agile to every person means something slightly different. In other words, Agile is just an abstract idea to tell you to try to do the right thing. It makes a lot of sense, but note that I am not a fan of Agile, and I like cowboy coding. The problem with Agile is that management will misuse it to prove how smart they really are, and show their bosses how cool they are. In my case, I had a manager who used Agile to prove that: 1. he can assign you random work and reprioritize any work anytime. 2. everyone gets a small piece of a big feature, so that no one can claim full credit for the work. It sucks when an idiot tries to be smart.
I don't know of any two teams doing 'Agile' the same way
This is a problem for me as well. I think Agile works great for micro-services and teams bound to a build. Much larger tech-debt, I am less inclined to choose the Agile flavor method of the month.
There was a viral link a while back. Agile matches the CIA's how to sabotage your own org's manual from WWII (yes I know it wasn't called the CIA back then).
Ah I remember this!
My favorite term management likes to use is that we're "Wagile". There are different forms of what works for certain companies and others that don't. If you want a strict deadline but aren't willing to trade deliverables when you feature creep then what you are is a broken system.
Exactly! Nailed it. When the requirements, deliverables or features change, I think the deadline should change. Feature creep, I love that expression.
By “maybe” I mean that I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen it fail. It works bests when the team needs are understood and then the right set of these techniques are applied. Sadly people often just add random process and expect magic.