The Pain of Post-Agile Software Development

Agile is dead! Long live Agile! The word "agile" has almost become meaningless at this point. But one thing seems to be consistent, agile kinda sucks for team member these days. In this video I unpack this complex topic and share somewhat random thoughts about what could be next after agile.

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And remember - software is broken, but we don't have to be!

Timecodes
00:00 - agile isn't dead is just sucks
00:52 - 2 takes
03:26 - dictionary wars
05:22 - agile manefestnope
09:34 - it grew legs
11:53 - it meant something to me
12:53 - this failed big time
14:15 - what can actually be done?

#softwareengineering #techjobs #agile #scrum #softwaredeveloper

[timgerk]

Agile was the software component of a business trying to take the driver's seat. The MBAs and the lawyers were always going to outlast the dwarves that typey-typey all day.

[KilgoreTroutAsf]

Agile has become synonimous with releasing products that years ago would be alpha stage versions and never getting to fixing the technical debt because it would break compatibility for the existing user base.
In other words, releasing shitty software that barely works way too early and passing the cost down to the users.

[ThisIsNotMyHandle]

I find this fascinating. Especially Kyle's take. I even wrote a post about this a couple of months ago, but emphasizing that the same thing is happening within the DevOps sphere. Thank you for a good video.

[perfectionbox]

I remember back in the early 90s a manager wondering why the staff took a break after we shipped, he started telling me that everyone should be immediately working on the next version, exhaustion be damned. These people truly see programming merely as a means to an end, that they'll get richer sooner if the devs keep typing constantly. It's no surprise that they twisted Agile into a hellhole. They want to turn programmers into factory workers.

[randyriley]

I love the feeling that you're on a never ending "death march" 😆. I really didn't like the usage of the word "sprint". In the real world, a sprint is "run at full speed over a short distance", but resting after such an activity is necessary. In software, there's no perceivable finish line, so you're just racing towards burnout.
I want to add, too, that you can have a sprint in which you're working at 100% efficiency as an individual contributor, but you're only as effective as your PR reviewers. We had one guy we ALL prayed didn't review our PR's. He only did them on Friday afternoons after your PR's had been sitting there for days on end. So now the weekend was here and, unless you wanted to stew over all his nitpicks all Saturday and Sunday, you just had to put in the OT to get the comments out of the way so you could enjoy your time off.

[ChristinaFrieburg]

As a ex SM and CSPO Product Owner in Insurance works and developer and Tier 3 support the new POs PMs are clueless and dont evem know how ann insurance policy works

[duncanedwards]

You're totally right that the word "Agile" has been hijacked, and there's no longer any point in crying about it. But that doesn't mean the problem has gone away. Sadly, "Agile" is such a great, great name. If you go to management and ask "Do you want the team to be agile?" ... well think about its antonyms for a few moments, nobody would want to be those! Which is why it was always such an easy sell to management. So in losing the brand, we've also lost an incredibly powerful word. If we need a new word, it had better be something with wholly positive connotations, and truly awful antonyms. To get the ball rolling, can I suggest: ADVANCE.

[saschadibbern]

I abstract Agile more and more to "cooperative PDCA" (plan do check act) on my side same time ignoring other buzzwords and focus to give team members the opportunity for the ownership they need or are willing to take.

[HealthyDev]

Glad to see you warning people against abandoning agile despite it being co-opted. It’s a bummer to see so many people “throw out the baby with the bath water”.

[GeneraluStelaru]

Being agile is being adventurous. Few people are comfortable with that, and even fewer managers.

[AlmanacInsights]

Agree. Embrace "Watergile", be Nimble and go with the flow. 🙂

[lieb]

Just a great chance to get an interaction with an author of this cool channel before it explodes ). Really liked the authenticity of the guy, so enjoyable.

[jjmalm]

I had always thought Agile was just a shortcut to critical thinking about why pragmatic development is the way it is.

I think all the things in Agile are derivable via analysis, but people may gravitate towards reading the words as canon instead of understanding the underlying justification

[Storytelless]

When i complain about scrum, i complain about daily standups and retro meetings which are native scrum rituals

[dbred]

Scrum is not "Agile". Love to know what's the alternative to Agile other than waterfall.

[Luchsio]

Scrum is typicall usefull, if you know how and the result output can be estimated. In research Projects and projects e.g. Airplanes with high safety demands, i would try to avoid it.

[NocturneON]

The problem with agile is management. Agile doesn’t mean run the SWD cycle faster so you can end the project faster. It is an issue of ethics. There are too many software that are “non-critical” however ever every construction project is critical. SW quality needs to be more critical somehow.

[absintel]

The worst of Agile is when businesses insist on using it on places it shouldn't belong. Developing an internal tool or implementing a proof of concept cannot be treated as a complete product in maintenance mode where any and all changes will be bite-size and deliverable in a week or two. There is no value added by pressuring projects to conform to an artificially "agile" schedule.

[nickbarton]

Quite, it's about managers having some semblance of control.
They don't, they never had, even with waterfall .

[dranono]

> Badgile or Sadgile
> Moral compass
> Human approach
Yea I can feel it
Us nerds can be lost in the machine sometimes, Agile helped to stay present in the real world. Now it is corrupted, we're squeezed by the real world to accomplish a mediocre job while coping by using OpenSource software by people who were able to code on their own for a long time without necessarily Agile and without being squeezed just for the Jira to progress on a Burndown chart so a middle-manager that don't understand a single word of what we're talking can have a smile on their face while we're getting closer and closer to a burnout. ahah