Agile is Dead • Pragmatic Dave Thomas • GOTO 2015 on HackerTube: recommended by 11 Hacker News commenters across 9 separate months, 2016–2026.
talk · evergreen
Dave Thomas, a co-author of the Agile Manifesto, argues at GOTO Amsterdam 2015 that Agile as a branded industry has lost its meaning. He says agile is an adjective, not a noun, and urges developers to reclaim agility.
Offered in nearly every Agile or Scrum complaint thread as the authoritative take on what agile was meant to be versus what it became.
“I highly recommend this video of a Dave Thomas talk about what agile was supposed to be vs what it has become.”
20 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
I highly recommend this video of a Dave Thomas talk about what agile was supposed to be vs what it has become. Most of us are probably stuck working with some sort of Agile methodology regardless of whether or not we'd like to, but it can still be nudged in the direction that Dave talks about. ▶ this video
in “Reality Driven Development: Fixing Project Management in Software” · View on HN
Agile Is Dead: By Dave Thomas ▶ this video I love his talks for a few reasons: Often times... 1. He's anti-hype 2. He's contriversal 3. He's right.
in “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?” · View on HN
I think most of the people who wrote the agile manifesto said "Agile" been warped into something they don't agree with. Its supposed to empower teams, not enforced from on high to increase pressure on teams. Heres's a good one by Dave Thomas. A quote: "Agile is an adjective not a noun". ▶ this video
in “Dear Agile, I’m Tired of Pretending (2018)” · View on HN
Reminds me of this goto conference talk from one of the original Agile developers "pragmatic" Dave Thomas. Speaks a lot bout what agile truly is and how scrum is a very large mismatch. ▶ this video
in “Scrum is fragile, not Agile” · View on HN
Dave Thomas himself declared Agile dead a few years ago, but offers up what I think is a better definition ▶ this video
in “JIRA is an antipattern” · View on HN
1) Do not attempt to live code. change your code via version control, build small videos, copy and paste... whatever you do... do not try and live code 2) Read "The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs" ... its not really about Steve Jobs so much as its about how to be a great presenter. 3) building or writing a talk is significantly less important than the delivery... which means that more of your time should be spent on how to deliver the speech (recording I find is the best way to practice) 4) Pick a single thing and do it well, do not attempt to put too much into a talk or tackle something massively complex. 5) Make sure that everyone is walking away with something they can actually use. This doesn't require it be a hard skill... "Soft" or philosophical utilities are just as good 6) Have Fun and be funny... Speakers have a tendency to want to show off the size of their intellect, and the level their competency- having a speech be entertaining is way way more important. 7) DO NOT READ FROM YOUR SLIDES. know your shit. slides are supplementary Extra Credit. Here's a collection of some fantastic technical speeches: * [link] * [link] * [link] * [link] * ▶ this video * [link]
in “Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?” · View on HN
Dave has an interesting talk about it. ▶ this video My personal experience is any project where scrum actually works is a boring project, no interesting problem is predictable. Fortunately I see mostly frustrated scrum masters, not understanding why planning fails :)
in “Scrum disempowers developers” · View on HN
I think Dave Thomas[0] made some great points recently [1] about what Agile (as a noun) has become and I think it addresses some of your complaints. Note this isn't just a repeat of the agile manifesto, it is him discussing why he hates what Agile has come to mean to a lot of people and it sounds like his grump-level closely matches yours. The jist I get from it is that agile has become an Enantiodromia[2] and has in some ways simply replaced the problems it was there to fix. That doesn't mean it has to be that way, but thats what happens when people take something and create a religion around it. In my company we call our process "agile", but what that really means to us is to do the minimum amount of analysis we can to develop the features that the customer actually wants, and when they realize what they thought that they wanted was not really what they wanted, we can change it without wasting massive amounts of time. If we find that our process is causing problems for the devs, we tweak it. When we find we're not doing enough analysis in some situations, we try to improve those situations. No buzz words really, just what is best for us and what is best for the customers. [0] [link] [1] ▶ this video [2] [link]
in “Split user stories ruthlessly and get value earlier” · View on HN
Usually, the more a team advertise itself as Agile, the less agility it actually has. I myself have never seen Agile work well, not even close. I saw plenty of make-believe and head-in-the-sand and as mentioned in earlier comments, insane amounts of cargo culting. I really like the way Dave Thomas put it: [link] He also made a talk about it: ▶ this video These days this is the only methodology I follow and it works wonders, anything more I feel is just noise. At the end of the day nothing replaces actual engineering and understanding what you're doing.
in “It’s not the methods that are Agile, it’s the people” · View on HN
by Dave Thomas (PragDave) "LoneStarRuby 2015 - My Dog Taught Me to Code by Dave Thomas" - [link] and "GOTO 2015 • Agile is Dead • Pragmatic Dave Thomas" - ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?” · View on HN
Listen to one of the authors of the manifesto itself: ▶ this video (BTW, he is very opposed to the use of Agile as a noun ;).
in “In a nutshell, why do a lot of developers dislike Agile?” · View on HN
> Agile should still mean exactly the same thing as it did in the manifesto I recall Dave Thomas (one of the signers of the manifesto) made the point: He points out "agile" is an adjective, "agile" is not a noun. ▶ this video
in “Semantic Diffusion (2006)” · View on HN
Dave Thomas, one of the creators of the agile manifesto, has a talk where he expresses his disappointment with consultants twisting the manifesto into a cult-like industry. He calls this the agile industrial complex and says that anyone using agile with capital A is not referring to the manifesto but the industry and are selling you that. Agile is Dead - ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: What's the Alternative to Agile?” · View on HN
"Agile is dead" (now that it was hijacked by managers) from Dave Thomas, one of the guys who wrote it. ▶ this video
in “Why Developers Hate Agile” · View on HN
In those cases (the majority) the word Agile is used to describe it. Not actually agile, just whatever the hell Agile is. ▶ this video
in “Why KPIs are destroying businesses” · View on HN
McKinsey has many controversies. [1] McKinsey and Jeff Skilling used Enron as a "sandbox". [2] McKinsey is somewhat a consult cult that ruined agility with "Agile" which goes against everything agile was supposed to be. [3] Real agile and agility is now crushed due to them turning it into a micromanagement always on critical path. [4] McKinsey margin cutting has killed off lots of research and development and innovation. [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] [link] [4] ▶ this video
in “Generative AI Could Add $4.4T a Year to the Global Economy, McKinsey Finds” · View on HN
[link] provides some good content on his Youtube channel [link] helps to understand managing from an engineering perspective To understand some of the history and context: ▶ this video A bit dated but still useful book: [link] Best of all, for surviving at a difficult organization, invest in yourself and get a good therapist. I can't recommend this enough. Burnout is the worst but you can manage if you have solid, professional support to aid you.
in “Developers can't fix bad management (2020)” · View on HN
"Agile is a Adjective not a Noun". It was supposed to empower devs but has been hijacked by management to enforce standards. from Pragmatic Dave Thomas: Agile is Dead ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: Do you think Agile/Scrum is beneficial for software delivery?” · View on HN
> if you're not making an active effort to bill as much as humanly possible for the minimum amount of actual work, you are bad at business. Deep Neural Networks who try too hard to maximize or minimize things will take weird misaligned actions. [link] I won't go into details, but my experience from the past year of trying to minimize the chances of losing my home and work visa has provided ample evidence that this also applies to human mental health. > There is no way to know ahead of time what kind of contractor you are. Which is why any strategy that resembles "fire and forget" is a poor one for anything that hasn't been repeatedly tested before with mostly the same components. It's better to have a process where you repeatedly get visibility into a risk than to imagine that you can wall yourself off from it. ▶ this video
in “How I learned to charge my customers” · View on HN
Agile is an adjective; The values of the manifesto for agile software development are lost, this is the original idea of The Manifesto: ▶ this video
in “The Agile Fluency Model” · View on HN