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My understanding about Agile is planning ahead for the next step instead of planning the whole project before starting and then hoping all your assumptions turn

by devtul 6y ago

My understanding about Agile is planning ahead for the next step instead of planning the whole project before starting and then hoping all your assumptions turns out true. The product owner will create and prioritize the stories in the backlog(plan), the team will discuss and break down a story into actionable and weighted tasks(more planning), then they will fit those tasks into the sprint based on their previous performance(even more planning!)

undro 6y ago
I think the business concept missing from Agile is investment/ROI and risk. Until budgeting processes are also Agile, everyone will be operating on the idea that "we paid $x to get 'y', and now you aren't giving us 'y'. What the hell?" Agile works (when it works) because it treats software as a complex system that is best studied and modified through experimentation after accepting a high initial degree of uncertainty (which is slowly reduced through the creation of knowledge). The only comparable things in business terminology are investment and risk. Each iteration (I hate "sprint") needs to be treated as an investment with some risk percentage of failing completely. Until the money is handled that way, business people will keep expecting to get exactly what they think they're paying for, exactly when they feel they were promised they'd get it.
- jkarneges 6y ago
  > I hate "sprint" Me too. It sounds exhausting.
  - undro 6y ago
    Uncle Bob has the best quote on this subject (in Clean Agile): "A software project is a marathon, and in a marathon you don't want to sprint."
  - rch 6y ago
    What if the term "sprint" only applied to the final integration, testing, deployment, and validation phases of feature development?
JamesBarney 6y ago
Right and the fundamental issue is that the next step in agile is an iteration which occurs over 1-4 weeks. But most companies "iterations" are quarterly or yearly. So every quarter or year the business plans and discusses what money they want to spend and what they want to spend it on. And quite reasonably executives are going to want to know what they are purchasing with that budget allocation.
- Beldur 6y ago
  I think this is where the "beyond budgeting" movement comes in. See: https://bbrt.org/what-is-beyond-budgeting/ https://bbrt.org/what-is-beyond-budgeting/

by devtul 6y ago

undro 6y ago

I think the business concept missing from Agile is investment/ROI and risk. Until budgeting processes are also Agile, everyone will be operating on the idea that "we paid $x to get 'y', and now you aren't giving us 'y'. What the hell?" Agile works (when it works) because it treats software as a complex system that is best studied and modified through experimentation after accepting a high initial degree of uncertainty (which is slowly reduced through the creation of knowledge). The only comparable things in business terminology are investment and risk. Each iteration (I hate "sprint") needs to be treated as an investment with some risk percentage of failing completely. Until the money is handled that way, business people will keep expecting to get exactly what they think they're paying for, exactly when they feel they were promised they'd get it.

jkarneges 6y ago
> I hate "sprint" Me too. It sounds exhausting.
- undro 6y ago
  Uncle Bob has the best quote on this subject (in Clean Agile): "A software project is a marathon, and in a marathon you don't want to sprint."
- rch 6y ago
  What if the term "sprint" only applied to the final integration, testing, deployment, and validation phases of feature development?

JamesBarney 6y ago

Right and the fundamental issue is that the next step in agile is an iteration which occurs over 1-4 weeks. But most companies "iterations" are quarterly or yearly. So every quarter or year the business plans and discusses what money they want to spend and what they want to spend it on. And quite reasonably executives are going to want to know what they are purchasing with that budget allocation.

Beldur 6y ago
I think this is where the "beyond budgeting" movement comes in. See: https://bbrt.org/what-is-beyond-budgeting/ https://bbrt.org/what-is-beyond-budgeting/