
Ask HN: Do you follow a software development methodology? - olalonde
What software development methodology&#x2F;practices do you follow at work? Does it work well?
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PaulHoule
For projects or programs I like to design a methodology which is appropriate
for the context.

For instance, off-the-shelf "agile" methodologies that would be great for a
Ruby on Rails webapp can fail if you apply them to a project which is heavy on
'data science' because the 2 week sprint (10 working days) involves a 2 day
batch job. Start the 2 day job on the last day and you are screwed, start it
on the second to last day and you take a big risk that something could go
wrong, start it early enough and you will nail it every time. Thus the model
of "managing punchclock time" needs to be supplemented with "managing calendar
time" methods.

To take another example, if you were developing a video game you are going to
have people creating image, sound, video, 3-d, levels and other assets and you
need the right methods and tools to deal with that.

As for people who "hate agile" I have two things to say: (1) if you cannot
plan two weeks of work you cannot plan six months of work, and (2) agile does
force people to work through interpersonal conflicts that can often be avoided
in other cases. If you are lucky you can avoid them until "ship day", if you
are not lucky you get angry meetings, finger-pointing and another year of
"death march" to finish up what you thought was a six month project.

