Good Agile, Bad Agile

Steve Yegge, an employee at Google, has a very interesting post where he separates "Bad Agile" from "Good Agile". I urge you to read this long post as it contains many points that try to explain what "Bad Agile" is.

There's a lot I want to talk about in regards to that post, but first it's important to read it (and it's 180+ comments) to get an idea of Steve's thoughts.

Regardless of his thoughts, he describes Google as the ultimate place to work for. The stuff he mentions that goes on there sounds really great. I'd love to take a tour of the place some day.

Steve thinks that "Google" is the new "Good Agile", and that the word "Agile" is too overloaded and should be ridden of.

Personally I think that he has some valid points, but I tend to disagree with many other points he makes.

Funnily enough, he mentions two practices that Agile Advocates use:

"I would caution you to be skeptical of two kinds of claims:
- "all the good stuff he described is really Agile"
- "all the bad stuff he described is the fault of the team's execution of the process"

You'll hear them time and again. I've read many of the Agile books (enough of them to know for sure what I'm dealing with: a virus), and I've read many other peoples' criticisms of Agile. Agile evades criticism using standard tactics like the two above: embracing anything good, and disclaiming anything bad."

True, I think this is a real concern. As a pragmatist, I try to be realistic with Agile practices, and I've never seen companies follow an exact methodology to the letter, but instead use a bunch of practices from several places, and integrate them into their teams. It's a much more reasonable place to be than turning your whole world upside down, and you can always add more agility when you need it.

I am tempted to label all the good things he wrote in that post as "Agile". Seriously, they do feel like it. But just because he said "beware of these claims" doesn't mean they aren't correct. It's a sign of a great writer when he can predict the reactions of the reader and the people reacting to it, and pre-answer those concerns.

Do you think he's right? Wrong? both?  Your comments are welcome.

I'll be writing more about this in the coming days.

Published Wednesday, October 11, 2006 12:24 PM by RoyOsherove
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Comments

Wednesday, October 11, 2006 11:51 AM by Greg

# re: Good Agile, Bad Agile

I loved Yegge's post on agile. I remember when I adopted agile it seemed revolutionary, so NOT the mainstream of development at my company. It felt like I was the Che Guevara of software development. Like you described, I adopted what worked for my team and I and let the rest fall by the wayside. I never felt the pressure of the Agile Evangelists to convert in full or risk being branded a heretic per se. But given Agile (big a) adoption by the likes of Microsoft and many others, I'm sure Steve saw people labeling everything agile this or agile that and if you dont get it and adopt EVERY practice then you're just not doing it right. So I understand his angst. Personally, I've NEVER felt any pressure by the people I respect in the Agile community, Ken Schwaber, Bob Martin, Martin Fowler, etc. On the contrary, they've been circumspect in pointing out the better way and allowing you to adopt it, in whole or in part. Where I have seen pressure is in corporate America where people tend to sneer down their nose at you if you dont do agile the "right" way (see their way). Most of agile is common sense. Most developers have enough common sense to avoid dogmatic Agile rhetoric and employ pragmatic agile practices. A good agile manager puts his/her people first and foremost and in so doing honors one of agile's primary tenets, self-organizing, self-directed teams who follow their own rules within the guidelines suggested by Agile.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006 12:48 PM by Agile at the Chocolate Factory « A bit of this, a bit of that…

# Agile at the Chocolate Factory « A bit of this, a bit of that…

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006 4:20 PM by Gabriel Lozano-Morán

# re: Good Agile, Bad Agile

Imho there is no such thing as Bad or Good Agile.
Thursday, October 26, 2006 7:17 PM by gbdarren

# re: Good Agile, Bad Agile

I think Yegge is correct that parts of Agile are bad... if you work for Google. As some of the comments on his article noted, the level of software engineers at Google is very high. I think that is the main reason Google is successful using their methods. In addition, at Google, the top people generated the culture. They pay the bills. Most companies are not started by people who understand software development. I wish more were. But until more business owners understand software development, we'll have to play by their rules to get the bills paid. Also, Google doesn't have timelines that some companies have to work with. My company has releases that must coincide with the down-time of our end-users. We just don't have the luxury they have at Google. Culture has to come from the top of the company, and sometimes from the end-users of the software we create. We should all do our best to educate those outside of IT what makes the software development process work best.