[teampractices] [Engineering] Feedback requested on proposal for creation of Agile Specialist Group

[Dan Andreescu]

>
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 4:42 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org>wrote:
>>>
>>> The objection is pretty self-explanatory; agile is a philosophy that
>>> dictates putting things we strongly suspect, or even know, to be actively
>>> buggy, in front of users. When doing so includes replacing or superseding
>>> core functionality and either forcing or strongly suggesting that users
>>> should use the buggy replacement, users get, ah, pissed. Users like things
>>> that work, and when you replace something that works with something that
>>> doesn't while insisting it'll totally be more usable at some undefined
>>> point in the future we can't pin down because we don't actually know in
>>> detail what we'll be doing more than 2 weeks in advance, they start to
>>> wonder very loudly at our competence.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I understand your description of the objection and that some users are
>> intolerant of the degree to which we break things. However, I think this is
>> a mischaracterization of agile philosophy, or at least is an interpretation
>> of the agile manifesto [1]/agile principles [2] that I don't agree with. It
>> is still possible to create thoroughly tested/QA'd software with minimal
>> bugs and do it while embracing an agile mindset. I think that we as an
>> engineering organization place a higher priority on getting experiments and
>> features in front of our users than we do on polish, but that is not
>> because to do so is necessarily agile.
>>
>
I think, Arthur, you take too soft of a line here.  When Oliver describes
agile as  "a philosophy that dictates putting things we strongly suspect,
or even know, to be actively buggy, in front of users", he's just plain
wrong.  It's not a potential interpretation of any agile principles that
I'm aware of.  I mean, sure, people could interpret capitalism as "kill
everyone until you are the lone survivor - Highlander, there can be only
one!".  But people ... don't.  And I think it's equally ridiculous to say
that agile dictates putting bugs in front of users.  I think, Oliver, it's
likely you had some bad experiences with agile *attempts*, including at
WMF.  I think this just underscores the importance of training.  So I think
it would be constructive if, from this point, we left prejudice about agile
at the door and focused on evaluating the merits of this proposal on the
values that the agile process tries to foster.  Arthur, perhaps we could
start a concise list of this - testing, breaking up large projects into
small chunks, iterative improvement not just of the product but of the
process and team dynamics, etc.

Sure. But if you're an average user, you don't see the development
> philosophy behind what's changing in the site you rely on 9 times out of
> 10. When you do, it's because you're on a site that prioritises
> transparency, like ours. IOW, I wouldn't be shocked to find that most users
> involved even tangentially in our development processes, as consumers
> rather than devs, assume that this is just How Agile Works, because most
> dev teams don't expose their processes.
>

This I agree with.  But I think if we emphasize agile done properly, we can
positively impact user perception.  Both by showing progress more
frequently and by increasing the quality of the progress.  That's the point
of this proposal I think, and if we execute it properly "How Agile Works"
will change, because perception follows results not prejudice.
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