[codesushi42]

What is agile development? Is it anything more than a buzzword?

I have worked in several environments that embraced "agile". And they were all different, for the most part.

The only things they had in common was bad management and negligence of tech debt.

[jay_kyburz]

The Agile Manifesto

    Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
    Working software over comprehensive documentation
    Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
    Responding to change over following a plan

There are many variations built on top of these, but without these it's not Agile.

https://agilemanifesto.org/

None of these things makes management easier, you still need a good manager to make a project work.

Nothing in the manifesto says you should ignore technical debt, that is simply a choice your manager has decided to make. Its not the fault of Agile.

[strken]

I always understood agile to mean "as a business, have as short an OODA loop as possible, don't waste time making detailed plans until you have detailed information, and update your plans as new information comes in". This is why it gets compared with waterfall development, where massive chunks of work are planned anywhere up to years in advance.

At this point, nearly everyone who writes software is well aware that designs and specs you created 6 months ago might be out of date by the time you need them, so there's not really any need to evangelise for that point of view, and agile becomes a buzzword because everything is already agile.

[jim_and_derrick]

Totally agree. Usually if you use JIRA or some kind of ticketing system and plan two weeks of work at a time, congrats you are doing agile like a pro.