Swimming against the tide

[Wils]

Agile IR35

Thinking about this a little bit more. How does Agile affect IR35? I am thinking specifically about control of working methods. Wouldn't an Agile developer fall inside because:

The client is given control over the working methods, and the contractor is required to follow client instructions and direction in the same way an employee would.

Any Agile devs outside of IR35?

[Scoobos]

As an infrastructure guy, I hate agile and hope to see it die.

I've seen it work ONCE , with a very special and unique workplace.

Infrastructure cannot adapt to the knee jerk style "what do we need today" attitude that Agile seems to develop.

Great for PM's I'm sure, rubbish for anyone that actually has to do any work.

Caveat --> all my opinion from my personal experiences only.

[Gentile]

There's nothing wrong with Agile, except the fact that most organisations that believe themselves to be working in an agile fashion, aren't. But because they all use the same terminology to describe their different approaches, they each mistakenly think they're doing the same thing.

Top tip: if your organisation has a regular meeting that you call a "Scrum" that consists of a lot of developers looking frustrated and one hands-off manager smugly asking questions that everybody else perceives as profoundly irrelevant, and if that meeting is held at the same time each day/week/fortnight regardless of whether the people actually doing the work are tackling tasks that should take five minutes or six weeks, then you're not being Agile you're being Delusional.

Like most good ideas, Agile has ample scope for being badly executed. Any idiot can adopt an Agile approach, many do.

[alreadypacked]

The last place I worked at that was "agile" we'd end up with these twice weekly meetings where 10 devs would sit around a cramped table detailing what we were working on. It would usually take two hours each day, some of the devs would witter on ad nauseam for great lengths of time over the slightest thing. Two of the devs would talk in a barely audible mumble, they may as well have just sat there mute for 10 minutes instead of talk. I'd barely be able to stay awake during them.

We also had to use this "agile" software to log what we were doing.. It was the most non-intuitive piece of tulip that I have ever used. Sometimes you'd spend hours just trying to update something because of the 5 or 6 pages you had to go through to get to the right area, filter the list, find the right one and FFS just let me do my ******* job!! ARGH!!!

No sitting at agile meetings, keeps them short.

[MarillionFan]

In my fifth year of working on Agile projects, I am missing the old way of doing things.

Is Agile/Scrum going to be inevitable for all of us eventually or will it always be possible for software engineers to find contract work that is non-Agile?

Looking at Jobserve for Java dev roles it seems at the moment ~50% of contracts mention Agile. What is the high-water mark going to be and when?

WHS

Total load of bollocks IMHO. Working with a team now who insists on Agile. Sprints, stories? What a load of cobblers.

From week to week, month to month they haven't got a grip on what they're doing. Give me a good old project plan & gannt chart anyday. All mumbo jumbo for the short attention spanned youth.

[Boo]

Looking at Jobserve for Java dev roles it seems at the moment ~50% of contracts mention Agile. What is the high-water mark going to be and when?

Just say "no". Of course you will then not be give the role so you need to do it subtly : say "yes" then do the PM/implementation in whichever way you see fit.

When they break out the card pack talk endlessly about how hard it is to estimate SW timescales then consistently put in long bids. Your associate employee contemporaries will spot what you're up to in a heartbeat and join in enthusiastically.

Game over for Agile as the disconsolate PMs return grudgingly to the old ways. If they disn't start off there in the first place, with Agile words wrapped around a non-existent methodology.

This strategy works for all workplace buzzwords : say "yes", look keen, ask intelligent questions and ignore everything they say.

Boo

[teclo]

The last place I worked at that was "agile" we'd end up with these twice weekly meetings where 10 devs would sit around a cramped table detailing what we were working on. It would usually take two hours each day, some of the devs would witter on ad nauseam for great lengths of time over the slightest thing. Two of the devs would talk in a barely audible mumble, they may as well have just sat there mute for 10 minutes instead of talk. I'd barely be able to stay awake during them.

We also had to use this "agile" software to log what we were doing.. It was the most non-intuitive piece of tulip that I have ever used. Sometimes you'd spend hours just trying to update something because of the 5 or 6 pages you had to go through to get to the right area, filter the list, find the right one and FFS just let me do my ******* job!! ARGH!!!

[dogzilla]

By Agile you mean having daily standups and scrums and stories? Yeah most people have no fkin idea that what they are doing is being completely NON agile because they don't bloody understand the process.

[Antman]

Certainly agree with clients saying they are Agile, but aren't anything like. I've had the 'is the BA the Product Owner' discussion a number of times and views differ. Is a BA (who may be new to the organisation especially as a contractor) qualified to make business decisions on behalf of a sponsor? I've worked on a number of projects where it's impossible to identify one person as the 'Product Owner' and those that can take the role have deep knowledge of the business, and the way that organisation works. Even if there is just one PO from the business, I think the 'layer' between them and the actual team can be important - I've been told a number of times in the past that a PO/Ambassador user whatever doesn't want to talk to tech teams (rightly or wrongly or based on their own experiences)

Sorry, a bit bored obviously! It is Friday afternoon.

Exactly, it more the case of BA as expensive secretary.

[dezze]

I don't know how many work environments are truly agile. My guess is that clients think that they will look a bit antiquated if they don't say that they are agile.

When you see BA ads in jobserve mentioning Scrum, I think OK, if the BA is not the product owner they are just going to be an extra comm layer between the product owner and the dev team.

I also think that in terms of CMMI there are a few companies at level 0 who class themselves as Agile!

Certainly agree with clients saying they are Agile, but aren't anything like. I've had the 'is the BA the Product Owner' discussion a number of times and views differ. Is a BA (who may be new to the organisation especially as a contractor) qualified to make business decisions on behalf of a sponsor? I've worked on a number of projects where it's impossible to identify one person as the 'Product Owner' and those that can take the role have deep knowledge of the business, and the way that organisation works. Even if there is just one PO from the business, I think the 'layer' between them and the actual team can be important - I've been told a number of times in the past that a PO/Ambassador user whatever doesn't want to talk to tech teams (rightly or wrongly or based on their own experiences)

Sorry, a bit bored obviously! It is Friday afternoon.

[Antman]

I don't know how many work environments are truly agile. My guess is that clients think that they will look a bit antiquated if they don't say that they are agile.

When you see BA ads in jobserve mentioning Scrum, I think OK, if the BA is not the product owner they are just going to be an extra comm layer between the product owner and the dev team.

I also think that in terms of CMMI there are a few companies at level 0 who class themselves as Agile!

[nomadd]

In my fifth year of working on Agile projects, I am missing the old way of doing things.

Me too.

Is Agile/Scrum going to be inevitable for all of us eventually or will it always be possible for software engineers to find contract work that is non-Agile?

Most of it will go this way, for the simple fact that most people don't really understand or utilise Agile correctly. What they do like to do is hack. If they substitute the word Agile for hack, they get away with it, which they wouldn't have done in the old days.

Looking at Jobserve for Java dev roles it seems at the moment ~50% of contracts mention Agile. What is the high-water mark going to be and when?

Probably 90%, but who really knows.

At the end of the day, you know Agile, so just do it the way the client wants and keep invoicing.

[Wils]

In my fifth year of working on Agile projects, I am missing the old way of doing things.

Is Agile/Scrum going to be inevitable for all of us eventually or will it always be possible for software engineers to find contract work that is non-Agile?

Looking at Jobserve for Java dev roles it seems at the moment ~50% of contracts mention Agile. What is the high-water mark going to be and when?