Jira and all the other modern tools/methods

I'm working for a big IT company, maybe it's better in smaller ones...

I'm a sw developer since the early 9ies now. We used only a few and necessary tools to do our job. Mostly we were 2-3 people doing stuff together. So called "projects" were just done and delivered in a few days. Bigger ones in weeks. All good. We were - in fact - agile.

Nowadays we behave like we never ever have developed a thing. Starting with BIC phases (Business Information Context) using tools like Jira (and many others). We first "draw" everything first having a lot of pictures at the end but no code. We have "roles" which leads to having 10 people in a project (instead of 2-3) increasing the costs. This leads to a huge discussion about beeing "too expensive", etc. Today I spend most of the time in dailies, weeklies, etc. without coding a single line.

They now talk about MVPs (Minimal Viable Products) as the "new kid on the block". The meaning ist to just start with a simple program and then later add more functions (more MVP's). Very funny as that was the method we did it in the 9ies (and before).

What do you think?

While I am not as old as you I also started coding very early in my life and I think most of these things are highly not needed and just big time wasters.

I have always been thinking about this same problem and that is why for my own personal projects/gigs I mostly don't use any of these things anymore especially frameworks, I will rather write my code raw without any framework.

Yes I do use libraries sometimes but definitely not a framework except once in a while when I use vue.js because a lot of frameworks don't support backward compatibility and this is JUST CRAZY and a total waste of time even though they claim they solve the problem of helping you deliver products faster(but each update they totally break your whole project and most times you need to rewrite it from scratch to support the new version) so yes I also hate all this type of things and don't use them for my own personal projects/gigs and eventually when I have my full company started I would not allow any of my staffs to make use of most of these things. Just my own personal view.

I feel you. Companies out there often advertise job vacancies that they are on fast pace AGILE/SCRUM methodology instead of waterfall SDLC. They have this so call sprints and morning meetings. Scrum master or another fancy word for project manager. Software engineers need to submit bug fixes and then update the Kanban or Scrum board on JIRA. Code undergo code review and all the process just taking longer time as before. This kind of working environment maybe suitable for a big team. I never work in such an environment but I can imagine what could happen. Does it improve quality of product? I don’t know. Maybe a good way to stop junior developers screw up the main product. Working in such environment make developers become like machines. I totally not interested.

I began working with an agile methodology this year. And I can say that

aeric said:

Working in such environment make developers become like machines.

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It is way more humane.

But it has to be implemented correctly.

Dailys are 15 minutes only, not more. If they take longer the week was implemented incorrectly
Technicalities can not be discussed on dialys, if there are questions project manager assigns a senior to a junior or creates a meeting for just 2 devs.
Devs doesn't concern with acquiring the information to solve the issue, that is project manager job to contact the issuer and get all the needed information
Also devs don't need to present the work that is the work of QA and project manager.

Weeklies must be one hour at most. And only one day of the week.

Devs must not be in more than on daily at Day. One weekly at at week.

I like it, i can really focus on tasks.

It indeed increase code quality and quality of life

We started this agile way of working in research organizaiton from last year. No researcher can tolerate daily meetings so change it to weekly. We do have more communications with stakeholders and direction changes than before but also kind of lost the feeling of freedom for innovation. In general it runs well. Have to adapt as world changes like a highspeed train.

I started working with agile methods about 9 years ago. I have mixed feelings about this. On the positive side I can say that you can see when your project / code runs in the wrong direction and you are on a better way with progress. On the negative side you are "more productive". I feel like "Squeezed like a lemon". You have to plan your innovations. As others said before I feel like a coding machine but not as a human beeing.

KMatle said:

What do you think?

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That society makes us walk in circles.

If the managers are, on average, are younger than you - they will always find a way to Hype and up-Vibe old methods and make them seem like this will justify their "promotion" (or just that shiney new MBA or something in their pockets.) I was lucky - it was just me in the office and no one else in the building knew anything but how to use what I coded for them.

I start at the beginning and work through to the end - everything just happens at the speed at which it goes - sometimes the accelerator is at illegal - sometimes its a cruise along the coast.

I learned early on in product presentations that the Salesperson would sell-me-down-the-river with promises based on unknown expertise and realities I also learned that the Sales guys were the ones who had to answer to the clients - so I was always very agile in not giving them any answers. (except the standard - "two weeks").

Basically - - Agile-Method-this Agile-Method-that MVP BIC bunk.