[antonvs]

> A software engineer would never just slop out an entire feature based on the first discussion with a stakeholder and then expect the stakeholder to continuously refine their statement until the right thing is slopped out. That's just not how it works and it makes very little sense.

Didn’t you just describe Agile?

[Retric]

Who hurt you?

Sorry couldn’t resist. Agile’s point was getting feedback during the process rather than after something is complete enough to be shipped thus minimizing risk and avoiding wasted effort.

Instead people are splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile while missing the point.

[rkomorn]

I've never seen a working scrum/agile/sprint/whatever product/project management system and I'm convinced it's because I've just never seen an actual implementation of one.

"Splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile" feels like a much more accurate description of what I've experienced.

I wish I'd gotten to see the real thing(s) so I could at least have an informed opinion.

[Retric]

Yea, I think scrum etc is largely a failure in practice.

The manager for the only team I think actually checked all the agile boxes had a UI background so she thought in terms of mock-ups, backend, and polishing as different tasks and was constantly getting client feedback between each stage. That specific approach isn’t universal, the feedback as part of the process definitely should be though.

What was a little surreal is the pace felt slow day to day but we were getting a lot done and it looked extremely polished while being essentially bug free at the end. An experienced team avoiding heavy processes, technical debt, and wasted effort goes a long way.

[habinero]

People misunderstand the system, I think. It's not holy writ, you take the parts of it that work for your team and ditch the rest. Iterate as you go.

The failure modes I've personally seen is an organization that isn't interested in cooperating or the person running the show is more interested in process than people. But I'd say those teams would struggle no matter what.

[rkomorn]

I put a lot of the responsibility for the PMing failures I've seen on the engineering side not caring to invest anything at all into the relationship.

Ultimately, I think it's up to the engineering side to do its best to leverage the process for better results, and I've seen very little of that (and it's of course always been the PM side's fault).

And you're right: use what works for you. I just haven't seen anything that felt like it actually worked. Maybe one problem is people iterating so fast/often they don't actually know why it's not working.

[Balinares]

I've seen the real thing and it's pretty much splitting major projects into tiny shippable bits. Picking which bits and making it so they steadily add up to the desired outcomes is the hard part.

[antonvs]

Agile’s point was to get feedback based on actual demoable functionality, and iterate on that. If you ignore the “slop” pejorative, in the context of LLMs, what I quoted seems to fit the intent of Agile.

[Retric]

There’s generally a big gap between the minimum you can demo and an actual feature.

[antonvs]

If you want to use an LLM to generate a minimal demoable increment, you can. The comment I replied to mentioned "feature", but that's a choice based on how you direct the LLM. On the other hand, LLM capabilities may change the optimal workflow somewhat.

Either way, the ability to produce "working software" (as the manifesto puts it) in "frequent" iterations (often just seconds with an LLM!) and iterate on feedback is core to Agile.