Talk:Agile software development

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 16 October 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alexander.burkel.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:37, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Low Quality Article

This article is too unscientific. It mostly regurgitates non-scientific professional literature, while ignoring relevant research. I'm going to add some research. If any agilisits out there take offence at my changes, please read the research before reverting anything.Paul Ralph (University of Auckland) (talk) 12:49, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Please note that this content has been moved (rather than deleted); it is not significant enough in its own right to warrant being in the lead / lede paragraph. Also, the link you posted is to content behind a paywall; it's a bit hard if other editors are challenged to read this before they can challenge this edit. As it happens, my masters research topic was whether Agile Transformation worked or not, in which I referenced a paper by Dingsøyr which argued that agile practices do in fact help. I will reach out to you offline to suggest meeting up to discuss (as we know each other). Davidjcmorris  Talk  02:23, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I never said that agile practices were devoid of benefits. There is, for example, evidence that Scrum increases productivity. I said there's no evidence that they increase agility. There are no validated measures of team agility, and you can't demonstrate a causal relationship on a dependent variable you can't measure. The fact that all these practices are called "agile" without anyone ever demonstrating that they increase agility is possibly the most important thing you could know about agile. It's like pfizer selling "cancer drugs" that don't fight cancer, or "anti-virals" that don't kill viruses. It's a "productivity practice" that doesn't increase productivity. It is very common on Wikipedia to point out the lack of scientific evidence supporting a thing in the introduction. And you don't get to discount research that's published behind a paywall. Paul Ralph (University of Auckland) (talk) 21:11, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Can you clarify:

* What are you meaning by agility? Common uses included: Hypothesis driven experimentation, trying out ideas on a small scale. Early delivery of value (whether to customers / end-users or to the product owner / development team). Fast feedback to uncover change early and avoid too much investment in scope not required. The ability to absorb change without causing additional cost, by dropping lower priority scope. Etc. There is evidence that this happens.

* What you mean by scientific evidence? As Popper and others have said, it is hard to scientifically prove a hypothesis; so a theory should stand until there is evidence that disproves it. There is, however, an abundance of research in this field, following a wide range of research methodologies. Which methodologies would you regard as scientific and which not?

Incidentally, the research was not questioned, but rather the insistence that people read it before challenging the edit. The offer to discus the article and points raised in person still stands (I have emailed you separately about this). Davidjcmorris  Talk  01:26, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Your conclusion about testing being performed during development as an agility indicator is false. Often testing happens at the end, but doesn't indicate agility 1 way or the other. What people call "Waterfall" now-a-days also had testing in it at various points along the dev life cycle (why "waterfall" is a misunderstood/derogatory misnomer). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9001:2708:7091:6C87:D82F:9846:8ADD (talk) 16:40, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I know this is a slightly old debate but the biggest problem with this article is the lack of clarity. The introduction simply won't be understood by the vast majority of readers as it's full of buzzwords and never actually states in simple terms what agile software development is. It doesn't need more research, it needs someone who understands the topic and can write well for a general audience to edit it into something more useful to the target audience (i.e. people who don't already know what agile software development is). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:6623:9500:C866:C739:C5A0:3ACA (talk) 09:58, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Missappropriations to unpublished manifesto: Is this an urban legend?

• User:Paulralph You said, "...evidence that Scrum increases productivity...". Who has investigated this and where did they publish the result?

mcyp (talk) 19:09, 1 September 2019 (UTC) FYI User Talk:JzG

• This article misapproriating the iterative development and evolutionary management as part of Agile. What is the connection? This is border line to 'fake news'. How can one appropriate former formal works from IBM where they are published to a unpublished manifesto? So called "Agile Manifesto" is a web document. To be honest, "agile software development" seems a bit of an urban legend went to main stream but no body knows what is it and anything and everything is agile. Unacceptable quality for a wikipedia article.

mcyp (talk) 19:09, 1 September 2019 (UTC) FYI User Talk:JzG

Changing the Article name to Agile Movement

I propose to change article name to "Agile movement" as this is a movement, as in social movement. This can not be presented as a development methodology as it did not grow out scientifically but a socially. mcyp (talk) 19:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

• That probably requires a request for comment. Please get consensus before making large scale changes. Thanks. Guy (Help!) 22:37, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Micromanaging?

Old fart here. I have spent 42 years in the mainframe industry, both as an all-round business analyst, database designer and developer and (last 10 years) database administrator. I retired in September, but found retirement a bit dull, so I have started up as a consultant. And now I have found that literally every company is going Agile. We're doing "standups" every morning, we have sprint planning sessions every two weeks, we have refinement sessions, we have PI's (program increments) consisting of 5 two-week sprints, and every PI – i.e. every 10 weeks – there is a two-day planning session with the whole IT department, 40–45 people. So, they are basically burning money, at least in my view; having 40–45 people in a two-day planning session consumes as many manhours as one person can do in about four months.

And now that I read about Agile, it says that the Waterfall model was criticized for "micromanaging". Eyeroll. I guess it could be, but that depends on the project leader. Agile appears to be micromanaging by design.

I'm an impatient person and I'm used to rolling up my sleeves and just do what's needed, and I don't know how long I can stand this.

Agile is a fad. It will go away.

This is a comment to the cn tag I just put on the article.

HandsomeFella (talk) 11:00, 21 June 2022 (UTC)