Scrum, agile software development

Ubbquittious

I was never too closely involved with this stuff but did work in one place where they used it. Now I am wondering

Is this just a method of weeding out dawdlers and fellas who want to play solitaire for hours while pretending to be writing software? Most of these "methodologies" seem to blow in from the States, a country renowned for squeezing every last drop out of their employees

maccored

much quicker, more reactive and takes less time than normal meetings

Skylinehead

Ubbquittious wrote: »

I was never too closely involved with this stuff but did work in one place where they used it. Now I am wondering

Is this just a method of weeding out dawdlers and fellas who want to play solitaire for hours while pretending to be writing software? Most of these "methodologies" seem to blow in from the States, a country renowned for squeezing every last drop out of their employees

No, if it's done right, you'd do less work than in a traditional release cycle. Less room for disaster.

Diemos

Skylinehead above is correct but it does have the added benefit of highlighting the guys who are phoning it in.
Peer pressure can be a hell of a motivator.

Problem with all of these methodologies is that most firms in Ireland think that they can cherry pick the bits that they like out of them, then scratch their heads 2 years later when the practice hasn't lived up to it's billing.
It's fashionable to say that you are agile, very very few places actually are in my experience.

Quantum Erasure

I'm so agile, I climb stairs three at a time...

dotsman

Yes, Agile will expose weak people.

That very simple concept that you are working on a single clear specific task at a time, one-after-another, that you voluntarily choose to do, ideally sitting amongst the wider team, and giving daily (often a lot more frequently) updates on progress (along with everyone else) will clearly expose whose who can and do from those who can't/don't.

But not, that is not the purpose of agile. In fact, working as a team, comradeship and constantly helping one another are essential components. It's merely a by product whereby if a team member is constantly letting his/her teammates down that they should be removed from the team.

As mentioned above, agile is about focusing on the people and the product and not the documentation/meetings/bureaucracy. Loved by talented/energetic people with valuable skills, despised by untalented/lazy with skills that don't contribute to the project.

When done right, software is delivered to a far higher standard, faster, and often cheaper and is a highly enjoyable place to work. When done wrong (using waterfall, but with scrum terminology being a big problem that many organisations have!) or with the wrong people, it is a feckin disaster.

dubrov

Agile is all the rage right now.

I don't think it suits all projects.

It certainly won't fix a bad development team.