Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm not a developer, but I do know agile/scrum is more than just a "fad." My company adopted it 5 years ago and it helped transform the quality of our products and how quickly we brought them to market.
Perhaps you missed the point I was trying to make. I worked on a project for a big company about 15 years ago. We used agile/scrum. Only it wasn't called that. We used CI (continuous integration). Only it wasn't called that. Fred Flinstone huddled with Barney Rubble and they had agile/scrum meetings.
I guarantee that if you mention agile/scrum 5 years from now you will be treated like a Neanderthal at interviews.
This testimony of yours is just pressure to hero worship some acronym.
When you develop software you get accustomed to hearing about new game changing technologies and you see testimonies like the one above on a daily basis.
what amazes me is the buzz words and concepts that pass through the field of computer science and the pressure to hero worship them
some interviewer asked me if I was familiar with agile or scrum: I was dumbfounded and felt stupid for not knowing
looked it up and studied up on it
it's nothing special
it's just a regular old daily meeting the kind we used to have back in the days when I worked for a big company
it's just the old way supervisors parceled out work and kept tabs on people's progress
same old same old only we didn't call it "agile" or "scrum"
I really wish software people would stop inventing these inventions which are just fads
while we are at it I really wish software people would stop inventing diagram methods which serve only one purpose: to make some jerk who wants to earn 2x what you are making look smart
started out flow charts
when I went to school it was data flow diagrams
then came variations of UML
now it's design patterns
not long ago you would go to an interview and hear that you are a clod and a dinosaur because you don't know some silly variation of UML
where is UML today 5-10 years later?
I have not seen one job ask for it lately
Agreed on all accounts. I have to maintain a design-pattern-hell. I used to work for a place that b@sterdized all UML into flowcharts. I have learned to hate fads that unnecessarily complicate simple things. Your post speaks the truth.
Perhaps you missed the point I was trying to make. I worked on a project for a big company about 15 years ago. We used agile/scrum. Only it wasn't called that. We used CI (continuous integration). Only it wasn't called that. Fred Flinstone huddled with Barney Rubble and they had agile/scrum meetings.
I guarantee that if you mention agile/scrum 5 years from now you will be treated like a Neanderthal at interviews.
This testimony of yours is just pressure to hero worship some acronym.
When you develop software you get accustomed to hearing about new game changing technologies and you see testimonies like the one above on a daily basis.
Welp, before we implemented the process people worked in silos and projects were constantly late, over-budget and riddled with bugs. Call it scrum/agile or whatever you want, but the system worked and systems thinking in general works. You sound like a cranky old man who's upset that the times are passing you by.
Personally I am resistant to these changes as well even though my company has moved in this direction. I am an intelligent individual with my own way of doing things, why do I have to give that up to do things in this fashion? However, you have to see it from the company's point of view. They don't care about individualism. They would be perfectly happy to have workers who are clones but productive and can deliver on time. So they will go out and use these tried and true methods. Even if they annoy one very good developer who ends up leaving the company but raise the productively of the team 1%, they win. I always tell my peers, the goal is to always shoot for management, I don't care how much you love development. As a cog in the machine, you don't have any say in you future.
At my prior employer, the so-called "stand up meeting" devolved into a daily 90 minute long time waster that took place in an auditorium and across all 4 US time zones via Webex.
There has to be a better way to go about doing this that doesn't disturb those like you and others that are not involved... how silly.
Is there a "break room" area or an area where you can get water/coffee....? Something like this should be conducted in an area such as that if there's no formal meeting rooms.
what amazes me is the buzz words and concepts that pass through the field of computer science and the pressure to hero worship them
No doubt about it. The original methodologies often start out as sound concepts and principles, and have often been employed for ages.
The turning point is when marketing, sales, senior administration, and other non-technical buzzword fetishists get all excited and go off their chains with the use of words that no longer mean what they used to. They spin it up until "Agile" (for example) washes your clothes, massages your feet, saves the children, and even takes out the trash for you too.
Before long, you end up with bungled buzzword-driven directives dished out by what amount to corporate cult leaders who haven't got a clue about how technology actually functions. Then someone, somewhere, pushes a new methodology, because the only way to get away from the old polluted one, is to level it and start with something else.
At this very moment we have a VP who can't keep from dumping "Agile" into every third sentence. He also has a tome of sports metaphors somewhere too, which he whips out and uses from time to time. It's embarrassing, really.
what amazes me is the buzz words and concepts that pass through the field of computer science and the pressure to hero worship them
some interviewer asked me if I was familiar with agile or scrum: I was dumbfounded and felt stupid for not knowing
looked it up and studied up on it
it's nothing special
it's just a regular old daily meeting the kind we used to have back in the days when I worked for a big company
it's just the old way supervisors parceled out work and kept tabs on people's progress
same old same old only we didn't call it "agile" or "scrum"
I really wish software people would stop inventing these inventions which are just fads
while we are at it I really wish software people would stop inventing diagram methods which serve only one purpose: to make some jerk who wants to earn 2x what you are making look smart
started out flow charts
when I went to school it was data flow diagrams
then came variations of UML
now it's design patterns
not long ago you would go to an interview and hear that you are a clod and a dinosaur because you don't know some silly variation of UML
where is UML today 5-10 years later?
I have not seen one job ask for it lately
Based on your description, you don't know what scrum/agile is. Is more than the daily standup.
Personally I am resistant to these changes as well even though my company has moved in this direction. I am an intelligent individual with my own way of doing things, why do I have to give that up to do things in this fashion? However, you have to see it from the company's point of view. They don't care about individualism. They would be perfectly happy to have workers who are clones but productive and can deliver on time. So they will go out and use these tried and true methods. Even if they annoy one very good developer who ends up leaving the company but raise the productively of the team 1%, they win. I always tell my peers, the goal is to always shoot for management, I don't care how much you love development. As a cog in the machine, you don't have any say in you future.
Agreed, its all about productivity, never about innovation.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
