feyn

FWIW https://neilonsoftware.com/2018/07/12/my-response-to-as-a-te...

I wrote a blog post in reply: https://neilonsoftware.com/2017/03/10/my-response-to-how-to-...

FWIW, I don't take the manifesto or the principles behind it literally for many of the same reasons you hint at.

My attitude when looking strictly at agile doctrine is a mix of skepticism (especially after having learned and practiced agile for around 15 years now) and thinking, "Hummm...they might be onto something..." I don't often criticize the written word of how people try to describe agile, but instead try to understand "what were they trying to say?"

A point of illumination for me as to which parts of agile I was most interested in developing a deeper practical knowledge of, happened after I watched a few documentaries on Skunkworks, and how that group operated. Robert Kelly's 14 Rules and Practices does (to me) have a lot of conceptual similarities with the manifesto, especially when you see how they were practiced on some of the most difficult technical challenges humans have ever faced:

http://lockheedmartin.com/us/aeronautics/skunkworks/14rules....

I think that if someone were to pin me down and say "Tell me the doctrine you follow!!!!" and I was forced at gunpoint to give a simple single answer I would point to Kelly's 14 Rules over the manifesto.

A deeply unfortunate fact of the agile's history is that the C3 system wasn't really very successful by just about any dimension:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...

I've been told by many of Agile Manifesto acolytes that the C3 project's less-than-stellar results don't matter, but I personally think it does. At a minimum, at least you can point to Kelly's Skunkworks team, and see how they shaped modern history with their inventions and ability to deliver improbable solutions on an impossible schedule.

In summary, where Kelly's 14 and the Agile Manifesto & Principles conceptually overlap, I believe there is much worth learning.

Ooo! I wrote another article talking about single date estimations:

https://neilonsoftware.com/2016/07/13/a-far-too-brief-rough-...

Yes, a specific date is absolutely what every manager at every level in the organization wants. As long a payroll is issued bi-weekly, and earnings reported quarterly, the desire for a fixed date will be a thing.

The issue is, fixes dates when it comes to new software development is a fantasy. If you really, really wanted to talk to experts about hitting dates, I'm thinking that a well-funded initiative done in collaboration with 3 of the 4 branches of the U.S. military and the most respected innovator in aviation technology would be where you would go to find them. I would like to offer up the F-35 Joint Strike/Fighter program as exhibit 'A'. Turns out, despite all that funding and discipline (and threats of what will happen if you miss a deadline), they still can't hit their dates. If they can't, what hope do we have? That's not a rhetorical excuse - that's a real question.

Is the answer Agile? Personally, I don't think it is. I think Hollywood has a far better model that anyone else does (pre-production -> production-> post-production). To get new ideas, I study how specific movies are made. One of my favorite case-studies is how they did "Max Max: Fury Road" (lots of storyboards - lots and lots and lots of storyboards). "But hollywood movies are always late/overbudget!!!", yes - which is my point. They know that and have specific adaptions that make this process work decade over decade - and generally a hell of a lot of cash in the process. At a minim, if Agile ain't workin' for everyone, we've got to try to get new ideas from somewhere. My personal choice is Hollywood.

"I'm not sure this article is really saying too much at all" I believe to be accurate, and I'm the author. I wasn't so much as making a statement or a point as addressing the questions in the best best way I knew how.

If "The Dude" wrote a response to Ian0's original question, I would think it would have a similar sentiment to mine, though far more concise: "Yeah man...but, you know - no man."

Well said.

Re: #3, perhaps so. I have seen many a good CI process go to hell over time. I could argue no one would have a CI process if in the beginning it wasn't making life easier. It would seem no CI process survives contact with the dev team.

Re: Modules, generally I do as well, but what is a "module"? A function? A class? A library? A plugin? An extension? A listener? A handler? A subscriber? A publisher? A DAO? A DTO? An in-memory service? A networked service? A microservice?

The philosophy that I subscribe to is continuous integration is not the same as "everyone check into the same branch anytime they want as often as they want" but also that it is not "everyone work in their own branch until time has run out and we have to force all of our stuff to work together." That middle ground can be very tough to find, but I find that if the CI system and the architecture are not designed to work together, devs will always thrash around between those two extremes.

Your point is difficult to refute.

My thought is as follows: McDonalds is designed around the core idea that people are fungible and that mediocrity is optimal result (by "mediocrity" I mean no better, but no worse than the average hamburger). I do not believe that software development resources are fungible due to the high degree of creativity and independent decision making required to strike the best balance of quality and time-to-market, and often mediocre results can hurt companies during critical stages of growth.

With that in mind, do we then say "If resources are not fungible and results cannot be mediocre then process cannot exist"? My answer is "no." A lack of resource fungibility does demand an individualized approach to training new resources on the process as it exists at a point in time, but provided resources do not change, the process itself should not change much outside of evidence-based optimization, i.e. "this ain't workin' so we better change somethin'"

To me, process is about expectation management. Every other aspect of a process is in support of maintaining or exceeding expectations. I believe that if a process is so catered to individual whims that no expectations can be reliably set, then there isn't a process. Having said that, I do believe you can achieve a relatively consistent level of meeting and/or exceeding expectations with a process customized to the individual needs of the team members.

Still, your point is very valid. Mine were only additional thoughts inspired by your astute observation.

This is a good place to start:

https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html

The opening sentence sets the tone well for the article well:

"'Microservices' - yet another new term on the crowded streets of software architecture."

A colleague of mine once said that his work (he was a business strategist) was "slowly coming into focus." We're pretty far along today in our understanding of microservices, but at the time the article was written (early 2014) microservices were "slowly coming into focus". Reading what people where thinking when the industry was trying to define them should help in understanding what they are today.

Thank you! I'm not sure when the industry confused that point, but I guess I can understand how.