
The Agile process of software development is often perverted by politics (2016) - lkrubner
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-agile-process-of-software-development-is-often-perverted-by-sick-politics
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DannyBee
Software methodologies that don't actually account for and work with the way
humans actually behave (instead of some idealized notion of how they should)
end up like this - tons of essays on how it's not really the methodology's
fault, it's the implementations, etc.

It is the methodology's fault, by definition - they exist to be implemented,
and if the in practice implementations don't work as intended, then something
is wrong in the method, level of proscription, etc.

~~~
skybrian
That seems a bit strong. Coming up with a methodology that no business can
screw up, no matter how loosely they follow it, seems like it would be very
difficult? Is that a realistic standard of success?

Maybe we could make an analogy to cookbook recipes. Some recipes require
cooking skill and some practice to do them successfully. But if the recipe is
good, you should be able to train at least some cooks to have consistent
success with it.

But I would guess that such a methodology wouldn't actually generalize to lots
of different kinds of software. It might work for repeatedly building similar
things using similar technology in a restricted domain.

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johnnyAghands
“the COO was a woman who changed her mind often enough that the various groups
that worked on the project were never able to accomplish anything truly
useful.” What was the purpose of pointing out her sex?

~~~
_ZeD_
umm, I'm pretty sure this is not the point of the article.

~~~
junga
I must admit that I stumbled upon this as well. To me it sounded like „women
change their minds more frequently“.

~~~
mikekchar
Would you have felt the same way if the sentence was, "the COO was a man who
changed his mind often enough..."? In other words, does that sentence imply to
you that men change their minds more frequently?

I've seen this kind of sentence construction many times and it does not seem
odd to me. “For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me,"
is a famous example. Is it important to the sentence that Pooh is a bear? We
already know he's a bear. In fact, I'll say that it actually presents the
opposite implication from what you reached. I think Milne is making a joke
here: we already assume that all bears have very little brains and so the
statement is humorous. We expect a contrast and yet there is none. "She is a
woman who changed her mind frequently" would imply that ordinarily women do
_not_ change their minds frequently, but this one did (unless you feel the
same sort of joke is being made).

So, the OP's question is, why did the original author choose to state the
gender of the COO? In my opinion, they simply did it to make the reader feel
closer to the situation. Stephen King discusses this kind of thing at length
in a couple of his treatises on writing. He says that you should avoid
adjectives because they clutter up the writing and make it more complicated.
If you have doors of many different material, you should change your story so
that those doors no longer exist because specifying all the different kinds of
doors just makes it confusing for your reader. However, it's a thing people
who are not well practiced at writing do very frequently (which is why Stephen
King discusses it at length ;-) ). I'm with the first responder in thinking
that choice of mentioning the gender is not indicative of any subtext at all.
It's just clumsy.

~~~
Sahhaese
It could have been phrased as, "The COO changed her mind often enough" and
still made the point without drawing particular attention to her gender.

Phrasing it as, "The COO was a woman who changed her mind often enough" draws
a lot more attention to her gender rather than the issue of lack of direction.

I'm not normally one to point out this kind of thing, but it stuck out to me
too.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Keep in mind the author is a coder, not necessarily a writer. In re-reading
the article though he only seems to specify gender when it's a woman. Perhaps
he really disliked this woman or he has some bias he isn't aware of.

~~~
zamadatix
In using the search function through the article it seems the exact opposite.
Perhaps you have some bias you weren't aware of when reading the article?

~~~
cannonedhamster
Nope, just re-read the entire article. Your using the search function doesn't
seem to have been appropriate to the task nor does it address the entire
context of my comment.

I'll break down my points to make myself simpler to understand as my points
seems to have been misunderstood which is a lack of clarity on my part.

1\. The author isn't a writer by trade. Just as coders develop best practices,
writers do as well. It's not fair to judge the author for bias based on his
writing style if he's not someone who's been trained on this.

2\. It's entirely possible that this particular COO was one of many, however
they were so odious as to cause a more emotional reaction, which isn't related
to gender. As far as gender specific comments there aren't many one about a
man and to about one particular woman. We may be more sensitive to this now as
this article was written before the MeToo movement really gained stride, so
it's possible we're seeing this through our current understanding without
taking into account that we've shifted as a culture since then.

3\. The third possibly is that there's an inherent bias. It's a possibility,
but it's not a definite, and certainly even if there is a bias it didn't
reflect terribly on the author as it's really minor. I have biases, you have
biases, they were/are an important function in quick decision making that can
save lives or not. The book "Thinking Fast and Slow" goes into this really
well if you're interested.

Hopefully this clarifies better what I was attempting to address.

~~~
zamadatix
"Your using the search function doesn't seem to have been appropriate to the
task"

The search function is unbiased, interpretation is.

I appreciate your breakdown of how you delve into judging a author's intent
factoring in the (assumed) writing skill but this is not the content of your
comment I was referring to, rather:

"In re-reading the article though he _only seems to specify gender when it's a
woman_. Perhaps he really disliked this woman or he has some bias he isn't
aware of."

The _noted_ section is what I was describing as factually false and why I said
maybe your delving into the author's work was biased. The search function
reveals " he ", " him ", & " his " to be used more than " she ", " her ", an "
hers ". In diving into interpretation it seems to be ignored that 2 paragraphs
down the author resents a micromanaging male director, if this had contained
"her" instead of "him" would it be interpreted total condemnation rather than
chance? Why is this not also an emotional reaction and if so why does it
matter less?

I.e. the article is balanced in calling out gender overall (as shown by word
frequency) and the author seems to dislike people based on what they did (as
seen by reviewing the sections called out) so the only way bias in re-reading
can be called out here is if you're searching for it and ignoring what doesn't
match.

~~~
cannonedhamster
I think your response to my comment is fair. Interpretation being required is
why I disagree with a simple count function of gender pronouns. In rereading I
did see what you were talking about with the make manager being discussed. I
personally agree with your conclusion and could have worded my initial comment
better to be clearer, it was early morning for me which is not when I'm at my
peak mental faculties, so I apologise for my lack of clarity.

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methodin
Methodologies exist only to shepherd delivery - don't make shepherding itself
the primary focus of your day-to-day lest you lose sight of the real aim: to
deliver projects on time with minimal bugs while minimizing the effects of
inevitable bugs on revenue/customer satisfaction.

~~~
AstralStorm
You forgot the devs are stakeholders too. Usually they want to be paid for the
least amount of work. (Unless manipulated into thinking work is a goal. I know
a bunch of these.) Or at least be actually fulfilled by it.

