[rjblackman]

couple of points. building software is so far from building a house that's not really worth comparing. (just bringing this up because the analogy is used quite a lot). second, the signatories on the agile manifesto may have done some management but most, if not all, were strong developers.

While I think you can write good software with other methodologies I do think agile is a good fit for something that is supposed to change a lot which was the original idea behind software (as opposed to hardware) existing. the core idea is that things will always change, set yourself up so you have early knowledge and can change tack when you need to.

Another thing is depending on your experience you may have been exposed to differing version of agile. I have seen many places where it has been distorted into a KPI / mini deadline / micromanagement framework, which was never the point. From my point of view agile was always about developers teaching managers how they can manage us effectively, given the uncertain nature of software estimation and process of trying ideas and learning new things feeding into working software. it's part of our professional duty to explain how to do these things properly.

[js8]

> building software is so far from building a house that's not really worth comparing

I disagree. I think the comparison is between engineering part of building a house, i.e. creating blueprints. The actual "blue collar" work in SW engineering is making sure the whole thing compiles, runs and is tested.

> the signatories on the agile manifesto may have done some management but most, if not all, were strong developers

Yeah, that's what I am suggesting with my post, maybe it worked for them, but it was later misinterpreted, or they thought that the secret of their success lies elsewhere.

> is supposed to change a lot which was the original idea behind software (as opposed to hardware) existing

I disagree here. Software is easy to copy first and foremost (you don't need much materials). I think easy to copy does not mean easy to change. For example, DNA sequence is also easy to copy, but difficult to change. (And that's why people wish for rewrites from the ground up.)

> agile was always about developers teaching managers how they can manage us effectively

I disagree. That implies you have a much bigger problem - useless managers. Managers simply have to understand the domain they are managing (and ideally have hands-on experience). There shouldn't be any "teaching" going on.

But I also agree, in a way. I think who needs to listen to SW engineers are product and project managers, that the software is not just a bunch of features to be built, just like a house is not just what you see on the promotional render. That's what my post was about.

[j45]

Is it that far off?

Building a house is building a house until it’s isn’t.

What kind? What’s different? Has it been done before? How can we see if we can build those unknown bits and solve it?

Is a blueprint ready or do we have to reading and build each part of the new way of doing things to see to see if it fits together?

Software is rarely an identical pursuit each time it’s written for a domain.

[hinkley]

I find that many analogies that seem not to hold water actually hold a lot of water, frequently including some the purveyor hoped it wouldn’t.

“Low hanging fruit” is about as stupid an idea if you understand how to make performant systems as it is if you own a mature fruit tree. Going for the low hanging fruit on a real tree grants you the biggest mess. Neither domain works the way idiots pretending to be enlightened think it does. And you can paint a sane picture in both if you know wtf you’re talking about, even a little.

Similarly, what the home improvement industry has taught me is that you can build a house with siding and a roof for about 10% of the cost of the finished house. This house will keep you dry. It will not keep you warm or clothed and feed you. For that you need plumbing, wiring, ceilings, walls, insulation, and finally flooring. These are intensely labor intensive jobs, and if you 1) learn a few of them and 2) know the right people, you can build things to code and pay someone only to sign off on them. Drywalling doesn’t even require that, but it’s a shitload of work.

So yes, in fact you can build an MVP of the house. It’s just the bones and a couple of the most obvious features. And if you live in an old enough house, it’s been refactored and retrofitted so many times that you can’t tell that it used to look a exactly like five other houses within a block radius of your house. And so did all you’re neighbors’.