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Agile - at what point do you just tell someone to take a hike?

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    #51
    Originally posted by WTFH View Post
    Supplied services into a client a couple of years ago where most of the IT staff were "promoted" to PM, regardless of ability, and then the IT positions were filled by contractors with everything becoming a project if it took more than 1 hour.
    sounds marvelous!

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      #52
      Agile is meant to be a mindset that you get into for it to work well. I underwent the training years ago when I was a perm. In principle, it works well but inevitably managers want to do it on the cheap; typically some idiot wanting to do paired-programming with just one programmer, that sort of garbage.

      It also depends on what you're delivering; it works far better if you can go live with the end-of-sprint deliverable, as you can be seen to be delivering regularly, which is how it was sold.
      The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist

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        #53
        Ever work in an environment with 'stretch targets'.

        Ok everyone, big push, stretch target. Ok everyone that went well, lets have another one.

        The whole normalisation of deviance thing.
        http://www.cih.org/news-article/disp...housing_market

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          #54
          Originally posted by LondonManc View Post
          Agile is meant to be a mindset that you get into for it to work well. I underwent the training years ago when I was a perm. In principle, it works well but inevitably managers want to do it on the cheap; typically some idiot wanting to do paired-programming with just one programmer, that sort of garbage.

          It also depends on what you're delivering; it works far better if you can go live with the end-of-sprint deliverable, as you can be seen to be delivering regularly, which is how it was sold.
          Answering my own question from the OP here but pair programming is where I draw the line. I wouldn't ever accept a role where pair programming featured.

          Imagine, getting into work on a wet Monday morning with a thick head after being stuck for 2 hours on the M27 to have to bunk up with some spotty permie who is probably just as excited about sharing his personal space with me as I am sharing mine with him.

          NOOOO!!

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            #55
            As a fully agile trained PM (amongst many other things) I have found that people use 'Agile' instead of 'we have no requirements and no idea what we are doing but lets keep doing something'

            And because there are no requirements it looks like 'nothing' is being done because there is nothing to judge results against.

            If a project is done truly as an Agile project then it can reap rewards but too often senior mgmt. and exec's see Agile as an excuse to keep changing requirements because 'that part has not been built yet' - completely oblivious to the fact that just because the visible UI has not been built it does not mean the underlying infrastructure has not been built.

            But hey ho keep invoicing etc

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              #56
              Originally posted by Gumbo Robot View Post
              Answering my own question from the OP here but pair programming is where I draw the line. I wouldn't ever accept a role where pair programming featured.

              Imagine, getting into work on a wet Monday morning with a thick head after being stuck for 2 hours on the M27 to have to bunk up with some spotty permie who is probably just as excited about sharing his personal space with me as I am sharing mine with him.

              NOOOO!!
              Pairing should be done when necessary and only then.

              It's always happened since people started developing software. If you got stuck on something and sat there banging your head against a wall for an amount of time, you'd ask another dev to "lend me your eyes and see if you can spot where...." etc..

              Worked at place for a while where the cool kids had taken over the asylum and those people were mental. Literally paired on renaming a flipping variable. In 6 months there I'll wager I wrote less than 100 lines of code.

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                #57
                Originally posted by LondonManc View Post
                Agile is meant to be a mindset that you get into for it to work well. I underwent the training years ago when I was a perm. In principle, it works well but inevitably managers want to do it on the cheap; typically some idiot wanting to do paired-programming with just one programmer, that sort of garbage.

                It also depends on what you're delivering; it works far better if you can go live with the end-of-sprint deliverable, as you can be seen to be delivering regularly, which is how it was sold.
                Agile should be about getting rid of the process and managers and letting the developers get on with what they're good at. Unfortunately all the people with a vested interest in adding overhead saw it as an opportunity to add lots more overhead in the form of process and managers. If you're going on a training course you're already doing it wrong.

                And yes the idea of pair programming fills me with horror too. If we all had to share a computer with somebody else all day CUK's post count would seriously plummet.
                Will work inside IR35. Or for food.

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                  #58
                  Originally posted by OnceStonedRose View Post
                  Pairing should be done when necessary and only then.

                  It's always happened since people started developing software. If you got stuck on something and sat there banging your head against a wall for an amount of time, you'd ask another dev to "lend me your eyes and see if you can spot where...." etc..

                  Worked at place for a while where the cool kids had taken over the asylum and those people were mental. Literally paired on renaming a flipping variable. In 6 months there I'll wager I wrote less than 100 lines of code.
                  Depends on what you mean by pairing.

                  Obviously the 2 heads is better than one scenario I don't have an issue with when necessary.

                  I just have it in my head that there's an interpretation of pp where you spend literally the whole project bunked up with someone else 9-5.

                  Please tell me this doesn't exist

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                    #59
                    Originally posted by Gumbo Robot View Post
                    Depends on what you mean by pairing.

                    Obviously the 2 heads is better than one scenario I don't have an issue with when necessary.

                    I just have it in my head that there's an interpretation of pp where you spend literally the whole project bunked up with someone else 9-5.

                    Please tell me this doesn't exist
                    It happens, and when it happens you are sat next to some hippy kid who gloats and drivels on about how they spoke to Martin Fowler at extreme dev get together in 2010 and he said..... clowns honestly.

                    Comment


                      #60
                      Originally posted by Gumbo Robot View Post
                      Depends on what you mean by pairing.

                      Obviously the 2 heads is better than one scenario I don't have an issue with when necessary.

                      I just have it in my head that there's an interpretation of pp where you spend literally the whole project bunked up with someone else 9-5.

                      Please tell me this doesn't exist
                      It's just a ruse to stop people going on t'internet. Unless they sit there playing sporcle quizzes together of course.
                      The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist

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