Patricia AasMay 25, 2025
This whole Agile Coach debacle has helped me realize something that hadn’t fully landed with me before: agile started as a movement driven by builders to «build better», but it is largely dominated now with people who don’t know how to build and look at agile as a management process style. These are MBA-like folks who are trying to figure out how to manage an IT organization. But that wasn’t what agile was about. It was about a better way to build stuff, better stuff, by collaboration and not getting stuck in our ways.
Show threadPete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫May 25, 2025
@Patricia
Not to mention a lot of it (e.g. the original idea of estimating work in non-negotiable points) seemed designed to limit certain kinds of damage that management can do to the development process, not give them more ways to interfere in it.
Show threadPatricia AasMay 25, 2025
@petealexharris Even that was after the initial agile manifesto
Show threadThe Long TailMay 25, 2025
@Patricia @petealexharris The manifesto is decidedly anarchic. This has been spoken about by the originators at length.
Management was - and still is - broken.
Agile is a way of being able to work *in spite* of management being broken, rather than being a way of redesigning management as a discipline.
Show threadBakunin BoysMay 25, 2025

@sleepyfox @Patricia @petealexharris Agile was meant to be a rock in starting negotiations in what will be delivered, when, and how. The issue is that most devs didn't and don't know they even *need* to negotiate anything, so they hate on the process because they don't want to be accountable. Management have always just been freely changing the terms to suit them because there's no push back.

Like it or not, if you don't negotiate then the decision still gets made, just to suit the parties which turned up. This is why Agile "sucks". Sorry but this is 100% on us devs. "Fuck off" is not a development methodology.

Show threadBakunin BoysMay 25, 2025
@sleepyfox @Patricia @petealexharris we can't even negotiate among ourselves. Management can literally shop around between teams and go with the lower number. No team observes that this is a bad position to be in. Product tend to organise themselves collectively. Designers tend to organise themselves collectively. We're here crying about it like we have our hands tied. Why are software architects not doing more scheduling work? Why are product and design able to eke out 2/3 of the project lifetime?
Show threadPatricia Aas
@bakuninboys @sleepyfox @petealexharris have you met an «architect»?
May 25, 2025 at 10:25pmWeb
Show threadBakunin BoysMay 25, 2025
@Patricia @sleepyfox @petealexharris the saddest part is that I did not reflexively say "engineering manager" despite that being in the job title.