Agile doesn't suck, you're just bad at it

agilemanifesto.org/
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[@latiotech]

Thank you for not going down the "here's me reading a blog article" path even though it seems to be working somehow for all these guys

[@dalar2]

All sounds well and good until you realise your "estimates" are interpreted as hard deadlines. Sprints are a one way ticket to burnout - hate the whole thing. Imagine turning up to a screen call every morning to explain what exactly you are working on, why you didn't managed to get something done the previous day... in any other occupation you would call this micromanaging but for some reason we give it a pass in software development.

[@justine_chang39]

completely agree with this

[@WebDevCody]

But why is telling others what you’re working on so stressful for you? It’s called communication

[@EusebioResende]

Demo every day will quickly burnout your team. Specially if you're showing it to the customer which changes mind every 10m. IMOE.

[@rcpro81]

This is where a high quality product management team comes in handy. They handle this communication of timelines and backlash that comes with it. Allowing the engineers to do work. Having a good relationship between the engineering teams and product teams is what makes this work well.

[@yashsolanki069]

It takes

[@frank13621]

Scrum standup is almost a status update even though they insist it isn't. The only time it has ever worked in my experience is when we went over ticket status and not person to person. I'm not sure why people can't just ping the relevant people for blockers. If people are spinning their wheels for days that is their issue and the team culture should be accessible enough to ping someone or put a message in chat when you have issues like that.

[@WebDevCody]

Even if it’s a status update, what’s wrong with having one daily in person? The point is the more you let people work in isolation and not actually have true communication, the slower it takes for issues to get resolved. It’s also 15 minutes so it’s hard to justify complaining about it when it takes very little of your day

[@frank13621]

@@WebDevCody They haven’t been 15 minutes in my experience and I have been in plenty where it is way many people so you give your update and nothing else is relevant. They like to put it right in the most productive hours too. If it were only devs it might be useful to me but it has never served me at all, only the PMs. Maybe you can get back into it faster but that 15 minutes costs me 5-10 to prepare well and then another 20 to get back into what I was working on.

[@WebDevCody]

@@frank13621 how does it take 20 minutes to resume what you were working on after a stand up? How does it take 10 minutes to prepare for a meeting where all you need to say is what you’re working on today? Sometimes you need to question if you’re using a meeting as an excuse to not get work done. Anyway, I’m not invalidating your experiences. I’m sure your companies treat standup different from mine. I find it useful to hear what the other engineers on my team are getting worked on or stuck on

[@frank13621]

​@@WebDevCody If I'm working on anything with any complexity at all it's definitely not instant to get back where I was before I stopped. At least isn't for me. I've found not preparing for standup at all makes it even more useless to me and I end up forgetting things. It probably doesn't take 10 minutes but a simple "I'm still working on ticket 123 and should be done this afternoon" doesn't really help anyone imo. They should already know that from the Jira board. Usually I have a whole set of things to mention between helping anyone else, prior blockers, and my tickets. It's almost never just a single ticket update.

[@JeromeMillion]

​@@WebDevCodyit takes the average person between 20-30 minutes to be able to focus when switching tasks. Stand ups are usually not exactly right at the start of the day so you have time to start something then you need to interrupt what you were doing and go back to it after the stand up. And most people can't focus right away after an interruption.

[@AndreiDumy]

Daily pair programming sounds exhausting. I understand it for onboarding someone or for debugging something, but working with someone side by side in a meeting for hours sounds insane to me.

[@kendrickstrickland9801]

Same. I work 100% better solo. I get in my own flow and try my own stuff.

[@WebDevCody]

Eh it’s not bad. When you start to notice engineers are shipping bugs and are lacking context of the larger system, you start to appreciate having someone to bounce ideas off of while working

[@plcflame]

I think it should be balanced. Sometimes working on a complex task, or that needs more contet, or avoiding some bugs is really good pair programming and avoids procrastination. But I prefer solo if it's a simple task, not much for both to do, maybe it's just "change some labels" and "fix this small bug". In this case, two people would not benefit much from the pair

[@WebDevCody]

@@plcflame I agree, it’s just an option for development which I’d argue aligns with the agile mindset of collaboration and interactions. Often you don’t need 2 engineers working on a simple bug, so you need to play it by ear. I’d say the knowledge sharing pair coding gives is worth the effort.

[@kendrickstrickland9801]

@@WebDevCody i work with a lot of engineers that I can't learn from. There is only 1 that has more technical skill than me in my whole department. Half of our devs contractors overseas. If I had to pair program I'd rip my hair out.

[@buddy.abc123]

Oh no, I'm not up for pair programming everyday 😅

[@konan1286]

First time I got here before your spouse

[@ashimov1970]

😆

[@WebDevCody]

Lies both comments say 27 minutes ago!

[@SeibertSwirl]

I was definitely first

[@WebDevCody]

@@SeibertSwirl you were first baby, always

[@EdwardOrnelas]

I didn’t choose the agile way, it chose me. Every contract and job I’ve gotten has forced me to be agile. At the very least I like to use Exclalidraw to map out the infrastructure.

[@FlintBits]

That 10 years of real XP is what makes this video. As a dev of 3 years, thank you for answering questions I did not know I had.

[@Mikkelzu]

Same 10 years here, and it still is in my opinion an inferior replacement to waterfall. I prefer to do my job, not be stuck in ceremonies and meetings for 30-50% of my time and then hopefully get something done. Agile done well is agile done autonomously and not with a corporate structure dictating all the garbage, which in reality almost never happens

[@FlintBits]

@@Mikkelzu Metrics baby! Thank you for sharing your insight.

[@bekasylutepov9375]

what do you think about "less"?

[@colbr6733]

In my experience it's all down to the team and management you work with. I recall first working with Agile and the emphasis was on evolve the process around what works for the team doing the work. Not on a prescribed set of structures, meetings and outcomes to deliver for management.

[@Snowi_93]

People saying "I work better on my own", speaks to why we need stuff like this. I think nobody actually enjoys all these ceremonies, but they're a way of bridging gaps in communication. After working in small and big companies, I've concluded that there's a critical mass of around 10 devs, when people's personalities, expectations and preferences start misaligning, often clashing; this makes it so managerial figures (PMs, CTOs, leads, whatever) start making assumptions about who is performing and who isn't, when the reality in software development, is often more complex. Agile is meant to be a way of communicating, and not a way to measure work, which is what most companies get wrong.

[@Goyo_MGC]

Glad you are there touching up on real subject from work. I agree with what you said, people are so focused on using tools that it ends up being a pain rather than a tool ( JIRA and Confluence are over-engineering problems 101 imo) and sometimes you end up spending more time doing this arround the bug rather than fixing it

[@davidjustice8087]

Great video. I feel like most people assume scrum is agile. This really help separate everything.

[@HideBuz]

It depends. Get a bad scrum manager and be in meeting hell and soon you will wish you're a solo developer who has never heard of agile development.

[@WebDevCody]

describe meeting hell

[@HideBuz]

@@WebDevCody +10h meetings/week.

[@karansethia1037]

The only small change scrum needs to be successful is to have a Project Manager only with technical background. Screw those "scrum masters" with zero coding knowledge they havent got a clue how a software projects work and what are the aspects of it

[@WebDevCody]

I don't think the project manager needs a technical background. They just need to be able to trust the engineers and the engineers need to not lie about their work.

[@karansethia1037]

@@WebDevCody but isnt that the case, if the PM had tech skills he/she would be able to evaluate how much time would a particular task take.

[@WebDevCody]

@@karansethia1037 no, because he doesn't know the experience level of his team.

[@MartynPS]

There are a lot more alternatives than just Waterfall and being agile is not the same as doing Agile. There are pleanty of approaches which account for requirements change and allow early delivery while still delivering on the points on the right. Agile (with a captial A) works well when there isnt a guarantee of longevity or you can incrementally release. It also helps if the customer has a significant risk appetite, if they dont that is when dedicated Scrum leaders and time estimating comes in to play.

[@whatgoglikeno6120]

compared to what other projects? Ive literally never seen a company or a project that isnt agile.

[@WebDevCody]

No clue, people say agile is bad but then don’t give examples of alternatives. Just give your update in the morning and get back to doing your job, it’s not that bad. I feel people who hate stand ups don’t like communicating with others

[@matthewsayovitz9196]

So many ways to be agile. Enterprise to Startup, it all looks different. But flexibility, openness to change, and iteration are important to delivering true customer value. +1 to mob programming! Thank you for this video!

[@sumitpurohit8849]

Can you please make a video on how small teams can practically implement agile using modern tech like nextjs, monorepo, aws, figma etc.

[@chudchadanstud]

Good luck trying to get your clients to do daily standups.

[@ylmazcandelen3121]

Glad it's working for you, but in my experience, it didn't work at all. I'm not saying in spirit AGILE is bad, just most of the companies I worked at implemented it as a show to clients or to higher ups. But at this point, I feel like we are at "communism is not bad, real communism has never been tried" but for AG

[@mdndev2627]

Honestly , I agree with that . I’ve been working at a company for 2 years now as a software engineer using agile and never understood why it is so hated (at least on social media). I also liked your point about small demos of your progress during daily stand up, I’ll try to make it a habit for myself. Cool video man as always. 🚀🚀🚀

[@chudchadanstud]

Yes, waterfall agile etc. All the "movement" I call them cult beliefs, fail when faced with reality. Reality is not linear, it is not perfect. You should develop in a way that makes sense for your project. For us we work on the requirements and develop at the same time.

[@WebDevCody]

"You should develop in a way that makes sense for your project" - this is agile

[@Sedokun]

I see, so those game companies not releasing a crappy games, they just follow new approach of software development that replaced waterfall, and games are released while being developed. Makes sense.

[@WebDevCody]

I'd say building a game is a prime example of needing to be agile. Often you can't know if your game is good unless you are constantly playing it and testing it. A lot of games do pre-release versions so they can get user feedback which allows them to easily pivot and re-evaluate their initial design ideas.

[@sultonbekrakhimov6623]

wow, I was a bit early I see 😅

[@Applecitylightkiwi]

Waterfall has its place depending where it is used in the modern age. I mean do i really want agile on precise development at a niche civil engineering place? Agile is good for startups they scrum into it blabla. But what i dont like about agile is the Californian way of agile. Its 90% faily standup and meetings rather than work. But hey i am biased so * Edit i forgot to mention how broken agile is sometimes because in lots of company upper management does not respond to changes well

[@WebDevCody]

I’ve never worked at an agile company that’s more meetings than doing work

[@ravimukti690]

that estimates stuff should be get rid of, people should aware what Vasco Duarte introduce about #NoEstimates

[@Guergeiro]

From my experience, kanban is a way better implementation of agile than scrum is. Startups are the "best" agile, almost no process at all and you always need to be sharp and ready to change. In this environment, the only thing I hate is "customer collaboration over contracts"... It's alway rainbows until the client is forever changing what they want and undo what you did previously. This back and forth is exhausting and tends to be what triggers devs into a process like scrum.

[@WebDevCody]

Right, but one technique is to charge clients on hourly work. They can change their mind as much as they want, but they will pay for it

[@Guergeiro]

@@WebDevCody yeah, but as a dev, I'm not the one getting paid for it. So for me, it's a frustrating back and forth that I would rather not go with.

[@powefo]

I feel that the general opinion of agile is bad because companies don't implement it very well. Agile done well is great, but agile done bad is terrible.

[@dr.lazysloth3415]

I think Agile scrum is for left people. Lots of overhead and easy to get rid of individuals. Quantity vs quality. Seems like you need to be very lucky to get a good team/management that isn't scared to lose their job and trip other people. To many meetings/talking for just completing some items.

[@WebDevCody]

not sure what left people means

[@dr.lazysloth3415]

​@@WebDevCody In this context I guess I mean that it requires more energy and time to deliver value just for extra communication that usually isn't needed to make the none developers feel useful and in control while they can't really do much unless you want more long-term problems. I am not against some meetings but I always though we were supposed to develop software and make sure it keeps working efficiently and correctly. I find working with documentation/text easier than with meetings. It's easier to make mistakes by talking but I guess that seems to be the point of agile (fail fast). I have never worked waterfall myself but if you just split the projects in multiple small ones isn't that like the main goal to deliver fast and receive feedback? I've worked Kanban while other teams where doing waterfall. Later everyone transitioned to agile scrum. I preferred kanban over scrum although we also had daily standups and monthly team meeting.

[@SeibertSwirl]

Good job babe! Love ya

[@alexhichamk6630]

Is he your husband? U keep saying that to him

[@SeibertSwirl]

@@alexhichamk6630 yes he is my husband

[@SeibertSwirl]

@@alexhichamk6630 he is my husband :)

[@SeibertSwirl]

@@alexhichamk6630 still stalking me I see.

[@alexhichamk6630]

@@SeibertSwirl indeed i am, i was just curious to find out, but i think i deserve a thank you for my advices.... i am sorry if i made u uncomfortable.

[@Clangsoul]

story points aint hours. but else good video

[@WebDevCody]

I don’t recall saying they were hours, but I might have fumbled on my words. Correct. Sorry points are just relative estimates around any story you’ve done recently that feels like a one that people can grasp the effort needed to finish it

[@Clangsoul]

​@@WebDevCody as example 08:10 yes you dont say hours but infer it with talking about in a time context. story points should be a indicator if the current team is able to do it or not. 1 story point is everyone on the team can do this easy. the bigger the number the more unsure the team is if they even can do it. also it kind of only makes sense if also the po looks how much business value a story brings. so you can prio the things with high business value and the dev team is sure they can implement pretty easy. all in all. just wanted to point it out for people watching. if anyone is in a story point estimate meeting and someone says "i think this is 5 story point because it will be around 2 days of work" or "this takes double the time then the other story we did last sprint" this team is doing it totaly wrong.

[@WebDevCody]

@@Clangsoul agreed, sorry if I didn't explain that well. story points often get boiled down to time from management, but the intent is to help the PO prioritize like you're saying.

[@kashnigahbaruda]

My vote is leaning towards a scam

[@acassianoweber]

Agile was created by the boomers to have a job in tech, just look at the average age of PO, scrum masters or agile coaches, they needed something easy to ge into "tech" since they lack skills, better they can technically do is build some dashboard in wherever agile web tool or build some metrics in excel....😂😂😂

[@WebDevCody]

L take

[@gold-junge91]

Sorry but your explanation for waterfall is so wrong! You can not start to build a product when your customer doesn’t what he want! Your Initial Process (Sale) is doing so many stuff wrong. And second: To setup your user Story is etc, you need first your requirements! I see where you want to go with your talking about the approach in the industry is broke and not agile or any other method is wrong. they have a use case the real problem is your management

[@mzimmma]

agile sucks. period

[@cotyhamilton]

Propaganda

[@ashimov1970]

👍🎯💯 Humanity makes huge strides toward better life and improvement not only due to super heroes like Napoleon, Alexander the Great etc. but to a much higher degree due to groups of people that share and do their best to achieve common goals and aspirations through COLLABORATION. This is what the whole idea of Agile all about. This why I just don't get all this hype and hysteria about Agile being 'sucking'. These guys just got it all wrong!

[@user-ek2jc1xf3y]

I've never seen less collaboration happening than when doing agile. It's just a race to make it to the next friday demo. Nobody cares about proper engineering, only about making it to the demo in whatever way it was possible.

[@rumble1925]

How did some of histories biggest war mongers, Napoleon and Alexander, do anything to improve life? Super villains Are you a scrum master perhaps? This type of "inspirational" bs usually comes from that type.

[@ashimov1970]

@@user-ek2jc1xf3y as I said - your managers/bosses/customers must have gotten the whole idea of Agile totally wrong

[@ashimov1970]

@@rumble1925 😄 No, I am not. And have never been though I didn't mention another tough guy as one of my heroes - Gengis Khan

[@obaid5761]

​@@ashimov1970 Bro casually takes pleasure in mass murder