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Discussion on: What is Test-Driven Development? (And How To Get It Right)

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ruministhistory profile image
RuministHistory

As a product guy, I tend to agree that Waterfall is needed in the first phase of the product definition and roadmap creation aspect. But, when you are in the development phase, if requirements were not clear enough , then trying to figure out the requirements while building is not good Agile. I agree that people get confused with Waterfall and Agile. You can have both, Start with Waterfall, lock your requirements, do agile development and then test in waterfall. I have seen too many projects go haywire when you don't respect the need for clarity upfront.

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zakwillis profile image
zakwillis

Okay, I took a couple of days to think about this (kind of :).

The challenge with Agile is, it is a training tool only. Agile is great as a way to train people who can't communicate, who can't plan, and can't think on their feet - to do that. Once they have those skills, there is no longer a need to keep doing it.
Agile feels like an unnatural, pervasive intrusion into the project. The processes are laboured, draining, and artificial. Conversely, despite Waterfall having many faults - it would be natural, if something wasn't working - to call a meeting. To rename a meeting and call it a 3 Amigos is stupid. Has anybody sat in a 3 amigos, when there are four people, thinking - which one of us isn't our friend? "Burndowns" is an abstraction away from what effective people do - getting things done. Have sat in retrospectives with people literally slashing their wrists because the graph wasn't a perfect line.
Drivers don't continually say 10 to 2. They move past that phase.

A Product Manager loves Agile because they think they have a handle on what the team are doing, and they can bubble up progress - but it isn't true. The tasks lose their meaning and sense, with managers saying things like we are 70% done for this sprint and our burndown spiked at this point. The product owner doesn't have a clue about it. The Product Owner wants to get on with their normal job - not spend all their time with a development team. Every project which is Agile, results in the manager/scrum master not having a Scooby about what people are actually working on.

We don't spend our time, running 2 week sprints, but if we were getting our house renovated we would not undertake an agile methodology.

Again - Waterfall wins because it is a natural process. We discuss what we would like to do, we figure out how long we think it will take, and we start on that journey, and we review it.

Am I fan of Waterfall, not entirely - many times iterative wins, but Agile just sucks.

It is a shame, because the spirit of agile, and the manifesto really made sense. Agile has been hijacked.

Okay, happy Friday.