Agilistas ate morons
Senior developer with 20 years experience. Degree in an ACTUAL engineering field - Mechanical Engineering. Tech lead and architect on dozens of projects using various methodologies. The SIMGLE MOST factor in the success of a project is the talent and dedication of the developers. The SINGLE MOST detriment to morale is the micromanagement of talented developers.
The Daily Standup:
I'm not a moron. I have enough professionalism to be aware that I might need help/answers from another team member. I address issues as they arise and don't need to have a daily meeting to ensure that I do so. If yor teams need that then you need to fire those who are unprofessional. Idiotic and disruptive processes do NOT inspire talented and experienced developers. It CRUSHES their creativity and motivation.
At one of my recent clients who had just adopted Scrum, I suggested that standups should be reduced to 3 times per week. I was told that "The daily standup is the most important thing you'll do all day!". Idiot much? My response was "I thought that the most important thing I would do all day is to develop working production code. Can I leave and bill for the entire day once the standup is over?"
2 week iterations to deliver a viable product. That's an idiotic concept. A minimum viable product might take 6 months to deliver. There is value in delivering features incrementally but if the minimum viable feature set for a product takes 6 months to develop then 6 months - plus design - is the length of the iteration. To time box everything at 2-4 weeks shows a fundamental lack of engineering knowledge and experience.
Incremental delivery is fine. Design up front is crucial. Those who say that customers don't know what they have abdicated their engineering responsibilities for taking the effort to understand and help to define the business process. Pure laziness. I have always been able to define the business process and hence develop solutions that work the first time.
Agile has become an excuse to hire bad developers and not take the time to understand the business problem. "we'll just try something and if it doesn't work, we'll try something else". That's not engineering. That's just laziness!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
