I’ll rephrase them, except in good faith:
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Talking directly to the people about the work is better than a 95 state JIRA pipeline
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Document your finished working work, not every broken POC, because that’s a waste of time
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If the contract isn’t actually going to meet the desires of your stakeholders, negotiate one that will
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If you realize the plan sucks, make a better plan.
My company paid to have Kent Beck come to workshop with our Sr devs. I expected to dislike him, but he won me over pretty quick.
I don’t remember what it was, but someone was like “Kent, we do X like you recommend in the manifesto, but it creates Y, and Z problem for us”
And he was like “So, in your situation it isn’t providing value?”
Guy was like “No”
“Then stop doing it.”
It’s not hard. It’s the most fucking common sense shit. I feel bad for them because these guys came from a world where there were these process bibles that people were following. So they wrote like, basically a letter saying “if your Bible doesn’t serve you, don’t follow it”
And all these businesses dummies were like “oh look, a NEW bible we can mindlessly follow”
It assumes that: devs can and have the right to talk to the final user, devs can negotiate anything, and devs can make plans. Where I’ve used agile, the whole circus was taken hostage by the managers and there was nothing you could do about it.
You’ll tell me it’s not real agile, but it’s like real communism, I’ve never seen it.
I mean, I’ve never seen a real platypus but I’m not going to use that as a justification for why they can’t exist.
I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a spectrum. I’ve worked in shops that claimed to be agile but to them, that just meant JIRA and story points. I’ve worked at places where agile meant having daily standups.
And I’ve worked places where there actually was a genuine attempt, and that was an awesome place to work.
