Miners, shipbuilders, IT contractors?

[Scoobos]

Wondered how long it would be until Agile came into the conv. I absolutely hate most of the theory behind Agile development, for me it goes with outsourcing - doesnt matter if the quality is crap, don't bug test, just release things that MAKE money. If it doesn't work, ah well, we can charge them for the update on the next release.

No pride in the work at all, after being at 3 different agile gigs, they've all outsourced crap programmers , made horrible purchasing decisions on "scope" that isn't rigid, cos its AGILE.

Maybe I'm missing the point of the whole AGILE thing, but to me, its buttons.

My view is that things will come round, as others have said - I think its not contracting thats the issue, its the governments and businesses approaches that have gone a bit too far (e.g. Big Private Equity firms aquiring legitimate businesses, minimising costs, maximising Shareholder dividends and then canning the whole thing - murdering our high street retail at the mo) ..


I do hope it gets better though, I'm sitting on a CV thats as powerful as its ever going to be and having the worst run on the bench in 8 years (out of work for 9 months now, 6 voluntary, 3 looking)

[bobspud]

Not if this keeps traction Leaner Programmer Anarchy | Agile 2011

Those crazy cats !

I am betting that 1% or less of the worlds programmers could possibly work using that methodology. I'm also willing to bet that those are the 1% that would have gone on to be Solution Architects anyway.

A crap programmer can be reined in by a good process and a tight spec but letting an utter monkey loose to figure it out for himself will not be a suitable way to develop the next air craft landing system or DWP system.

[Antman]

I don't get agile either.

Can somebody point out to me how a project board agrees a budget for something that isn't scoped or have a delivery date?

[eek]

I don't get agile either.

Can somebody point out to me how a project board agrees a budget for something that isn't scoped or have a delivery date?

You usually find there is no project board. Once a project board appears you know they are reverting to waterfall methodology.

[tractor]

....

Not if this keeps traction Leaner Programmer Anarchy | Agile 2011

This kind of tulip is a consultancy charter to authorise your very own QE i.e print your own cheque.

[oliverson]

I don't get agile either.

Can somebody point out to me how a project board agrees a budget for something that isn't scoped or have a delivery date?

You mean the kind of delivery date that always slips and the kind of project that delivers not what the business needs only to be discovered 1 year down the line as opposed to a few 3 weekly iterations?

I think much of agile/lean sucks but delivering production code in short iterations has to be the way to go.

[Wils]

This kind of tulip is a consultancy charter to authorise your very own QE i.e print your own cheque.

I don't have any strong views on any methodology. I am in it for the money, so waterfall or programmer anarchy, whatever floats your boat. As long as there is a cheque in it for me at the end of the week.

Thing is, methodologies don't gain traction on merit alone. There are lots dynamics at work that push these things along. I work at very large media org, and they have had a few people in to sell this to people and the devs here actively debating it, and as result many have started to buy into, albeit in principle.

I just raised it as whether it's good or not, it certainly is being used in some big companies and it runs contra to the idea that the devs are being outsourced and the soft-skilled smooth-talkers who also have a grasp of tech are in for an easy ride on the jobs market; It may well not be the case.

[bobspud]

I don't have any strong views on any methodology. I am in it for the money, so waterfall or programmer anarchy, whatever floats your boat. As long as there is a cheque in it for me at the end of the week.

Thing is, methodologies don't gain traction on merit alone. There are lots dynamics at work that push these things along. I work at very large media org, and they have had a few people in to sell this to people and the devs here actively debating it, and as result many have started to buy into, albeit in principle.

I just raised it as whether it's good or not, it certainly is being used in some big companies and it runs contra to the idea that the devs are being outsourced and the soft-skilled smooth-talkers who also have a grasp of tech are in for an easy ride on the jobs market; It may well not be the case.

I can see why an in house dev team or freaky valley startup would work well on this stuff. However I can't see how the likes of Cap Gemini or Accenture would let this loose. They earn money based on a specification and subsequent changes to that Spec. (those changes get to be impact assessed and a new blank cheque cashed) The TDA, SA and BA are big ticket items on the bill (1000 or so a day on a project budget) so Cap are not going to say hey this stuffs funky lets remove 240 days of a SA's time from the bid so the offshore guys can go ninja-apetulip on an off the bat solution or are they? if they do I wanna watch!

[portseven]

WHS +1

There is a future is in the business interface roles.

Enterprise Architect
Design Authority
Solution Architect
Technical Architect
Business Analyst
Consultancy

These roles are 80% business focused and mostly soft skills based.

see previous comment about offshoring architecture, aware of at least one of the major banks is in the middle of swapping uk architecture contractors (and some permies) with bob and his chums. the uk contractors are being told move to bobco or leave.

[Bacchus]

Yep, it's over. I'm consulting at yet another firm which is going Live with a major software implementation and will be getting rid of most UK staff, to replace them with offshore consultancies.

"How green was Silicon valley"

FTFY