Talk:Agile software development

Micromanaging?

Old fart here. I have spent 42 years in the mainframe industry, both as an all-round business analyst, database designer and developer and (last 10 years) database administrator. I retired in September, but found retirement a bit dull, so I have started up as a consultant. And now I have found that literally every company is going Agile. We're doing "standups" every morning, we have sprint planning sessions every two weeks, we have refinement sessions, we have PI's (program increments) consisting of 5 two-week sprints, and every PI – i.e. every 10 weeks – there is a two-day planning session with the whole IT department, 40–45 people. So, they are basically burning money, at least in my view; having 40–45 people in a two-day planning session consumes as many manhours as one person can do in about four months.

And now that I read about Agile, it says that the Waterfall model was criticized for "micromanaging". Eyeroll. I guess it could be, but that depends on the project leader. Agile appears to be micromanaging by design.

I'm an impatient person and I'm used to rolling up my sleeves and just do what's needed, and I don't know how long I can stand this.

Agile is a fad. It will go away.

This is a comment to the cn tag I just put on the article.

HandsomeFella (talk) 11:00, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Software dev has been agile for a long long time. Scrum is new, and I too find it to have a hefty taint of micromanage via daily intimidation. I've yet to hear of its value or justification, particularly onerous in the wrong hands: Agile/scrum means we work in isolation. Looking at what it does, daily, it gets engineers to speak (presuming they don't) and if you're really lucky, someone addresses the blocking, but not seeing the purported scrum master doing so. 149.32.192.43 (talk) 19:25, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

At Meta, we weren't "Agile" but the use of meetings and overmanagement are as you described. I am one of those people where you can just tell me the problem and I'll go take care of it. So you can imagine my frustration when our policy was to have multiple meetings planning out the solution before anyone does anything, then we finally go to enact the solution and find out one of our assumptions was wrong, so back to the drawing board with more meetings. Plus you the people in the meetings are often managers and nontechnical people who don't really know what's going on, but we are all supposed to plan this together somehow. So my impression is that these overmanagement methods are part of a general push for "inclusion" which effectively means that the person whose best for the job (the expert) can't just solve the problem before including lots of other people who only slow things down.2405:9800:B650:C3C0:AC8A:AD67:68D1:6DE (talk) 09:23, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Agree. And not only is it micromanagement, it's stealth authoritarian, disguised in thick layers of fake friendliness and fake good humor. It probably stems from 1) a need for detail control (which managers in the IT industry can dream of, but will never have), and 2) a desire of making everyone replaceable, in order to avoid dependency on a few individuals, and being able to kick anyone anytime, and thus stave off requests for a raise. But guess what: people make the employer having to replace them continuously by quitting. It's what's happening here: four out of 45 people have quit the last 6 months, another one is leaving this week. I will leave at the end of March, but they don't know that yet. HandsomeFella (talk) 13:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 December 2022

{{subst:trim|1=

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. RealAspects (talk) 08:11, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 January 2023

Insert after "Arie van Bennekum": "(DSDM)" Nickdevoil (talk) 15:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:56, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

In software development

In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile)[1] practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/end user(s),[2] adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continual improvement, and flexible responses to changes in requirements, capacity, and understanding of the problems to be solved.[3][4] Popularized in the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development,[5] these values and principles were derived from and underpin a broad range of software development frameworks, including Scrum and Kanban.[6][7]

While there is much anecdotal evidence that adopting agile practices and values improves the effectiveness of software professionals, teams and organizations, the empirical evidence is mixed and hard to find.[8][9] 103.255.145.74 (talk) 14:16, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

First sentence is difficult to parse and not very informative

The article seems to have fallen victim to an effort to include every piece of information in the very first sentence, and I think the result is that the first sentence is a hard-to-read pile of jargon & buzzwords that doesn't actually tell me anything.

I'm not knowledgeable enough on the subject to fix it myself, but I feel the first sentence should state the primary goal of agile design. E.g. compared to other design paradigms, is agile specialized towards hitting a fast update cadence, keeping a large team organized, maintaining flexibility, or something else? Then the second and third sentences could provide non-exhaustive elaboration on techniques and philosophies used to achieve that goal. Being non-exhaustive is probably helpful there since the first few sentences are just introducing the reader to the subject. There's an entire article available to spend naming and explaining all of the details. Chris3145 (talk) 17:06, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Difference between Process and Project

Agile is used to manage the production process of delivering products in the project according to Prince2, and it is not a project management methodology. It is complete nonsense to call the production process a project.

5. Managing product delivery (WP) - Managing product delivery (MP). Konsul28 (talk) 09:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

We follow the terms used by the reliable sources, not your personal opinions. MrOllie (talk) 20:29, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Doubts about a reference

Hi, I am very interested in technology and computer issues. In my spare time, I read about related topics and, if I think it is necessary, I help to improve some wikipedia entries. About the "Agile Software Development" entry, I added a reference and someone reversed it. It is a reference that provides information about what is talking in the entry and improves it. I think it was because I added the reference wrong: I put "Cite web" instead of "Cite news," and I wrote the date wrong (for example: 07/06/2023, instead of 7 June 2023). I've corrected it, and I think it's correct now. Anyway, if it is wrong, you can correct it by yourselves without deleting it, so we all help to improve Wikipedia! ¡Thank you so much!

The reference is this one: https://www.elconfidencialdigital.com/articulo/noticias/metodologias-agiles-era-inteligencia-artificial-entrevista-arie-van-bennekum/20230607181016584992.html OnePapaya (talk) 14:15, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

It is redundant with other references - providing no new information. Given that, and given that this is the English language Wikipedia and the reference is not in English, it should be omitted. This has nothing to do with date formatting. MrOllie (talk) 14:27, 13 June 2023 (UTC)