Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?
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@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
@pleegwat said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
@wft Pure agile is just as bollocks as pure waterfall. Most companies will be somewhere along the spectrum.
Well, I'd like to hear from a company being on the side of spectrum where they do it in big phases. Big requirements, big design, big coding, big testing, biiiiiiig maintenance. In that order. Weekly or monthly status meetings and no sprints whatsoever.
I worked for a company where it was a bit like that. We had maybe 3 releases a year. But it was quite a complex system for the tax offices, the applications had to work together and the reporting part had to work with the applications. I can't very well imagine an agile approach here. You either deliver the software and it does what it's needed and does it right, or it's useless.
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@lukfi The fact that the external customer (the tax administration or wossname) will only accept all or nothing does not prevent teams from working internally in shorter iterations, all the while making sure the components still interoperate properly. I don't see how the spec actually forbids you to do that.
But then, well, if you choose to work internally in the pure waterfall mode, you must be the first person in 100 replies to actually supply an example of a real company doing waterboarding^Wwaterfall today.
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@jaloopa said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
@pleegwat but isn't Agile meant to facilitate getting a quality product out there faster?
Nope. Scrum actually facilitates mediocre (or slightly better) products at a steady and, most of all, predictable pace. That is, when you have a strong dosciplined team acting in good faith, and no career climbing managers who subvert the process to serve their agendas (looking busy, micromanaging etc.)
This is actually what many companies would be perfectly happy with.
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@wft I wouldn't say we worked in "pure waterfall". After all we did iterations, for each iteration we had a plan which functionality should be completed or which bugs fixed, etc. But because at the end of every iteration was a "big testing" phase (internal, followed by customer testing), our iterations took several months instead of several weeks. IMO being agile is not just an internal thing, a big part is that you can deploy changes quickly to the customer and get quick feedback. I was in the DWH team and technically it was sometimes possible to deploy a new report without changes to the data, but this was done rarely.
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Waterfall-like processes are alive and well in the aerospace device industry. I came in during the last couple years of a very long project, at a point where the design, requirements, and code had already been written and we were creating test cases and procedures and adding the necessary entries to the documentation. Occasionally the results required changes farther up the line but most of what I did was safely contained in the testing arena.
After that came cross-checking and recording of variances for the government-required paperwork.
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@masonwheeler said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
So... I've posted this before, but it seems relevant:
I made it 3/4 of the way through it before I realised I've read it before, maybe the last time you posted it.
That article is... I don't really know how to describe it other than saying it's just plain wrong. The author is ranting about something that isn't agile and isn't scrum but he's calling it agile and scrum.
The most interesting thing he said is the bit about status profit but he doesn't go anywhere with it because he's too busy whining about something he knows nothing about instead. Jim Jefferies covers the social ranking thing better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrMFjcxkMo4
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@jaloopa said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
isn't Agile meant to facilitate getting a quality product out there faster?
It's about getting something out faster but maybe not what you think is a finished product.
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@magus said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
Planning out several iterations ahead of timeThe nature of software development makes it nearly impossible to be accurate@magus said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
they decided to do it one version at a time over several sprints
That's just silly. It's okay for tasks to take longer than one sprint. It's unavoidable. Sometimes it happens by accident. Again, the nature of software development.
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@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
The author is ranting about something that isn't agile and isn't scrum but he's calling it agile and scrum.
No true Scotsman, eh?
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@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
No true Scotsman, eh?
I guess you could say that if you like but it's not very meaningful. If we're going to talk about "agile" and "scrum" then first we need to agree on what those terms mean. Here's a link for scrum: https://www.scrumalliance.org/why-scrum/scrum-guide
Scrum teams are autonomous and self-organising, they have group ownership of both the process and the product, and the daily stand-up isn't for performance monitoring purposes but for shared awareness purposes. Those things are all the opposite of whatever process the article author was describing.
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@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
I guess you could say that if you like but it's not very meaningful. If we're going to talk about "agile" and "scrum" then first we need to agree on what those terms mean.
You know, I always have that peculiar feeling when someone chimes in amidst an established conversation and says something about definitions. And then it all derails into a highly abstract conversation about rainbow-colored unicorns. For example, you start talking about teams which are
@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
autonomous and self-organising, they have group ownership of both the process and the product, and the daily stand-up isn't for performance monitoring purposes but for shared awareness purposes
and conveniently omit the simple fact of life that they are so few and far between that we can write them off as a statistical error. It's all bright communism future to me.
You see, the problem with the spherical Scrum in vacuum is that it does not exist. A mature team who can bend any methodology to work wonders for them because they are used to getting shit done, can bend Scrum, spiral, and any other kind of thing to their bidding, but that's precisely because they are mature and self-organizing. Whatever they agree on will work wonders.
But you see, most teams are not like that. Most software shops are using Scrum to micromanage people, and to shoehorn people in some kind of process so that okay programmers (of which there's vast majority) can perform just ok, and poor performers can be forced to perform just ok or not fuck the things up too much. This results in mediocre results produced by teams of heavily micromanaged people. And you know what? A lot of their scrum masters are certified! Makes it a kind of official.
All the same, your reasoning about what "true Scrum" is about falls neatly along the lines of:
- "true Islam" not being the murderous flavour the majority either practices or endorses, never mind the fact that these "peaceful Muslims" are so few and far between that they are well within error margin,
- "true W3C compliant browsers" talks from not too long ago, when IE constituted the majority of browsers, and the actual compliant browser was Amaya (it drew the ACID2 smiley face well, but was complete shit in terms of showing the actual real world websites, so nobody in their own mind used it for a prolonged amount of time). The situation changed when WHATWG took over and started being descriptive instead of prescriptive.
Don't fool yourself. "Scrum as intended" is a spherical thing in vacuum performing simple harmonic motion, and it only succeeds when practiced by a team so good that they could deliver stellar results with any methodology while also being drunk. What we have is a "practice known as Scrum" which may have hijacked the name, but this is what everyone does.
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@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
It's okay for tasks to take longer than one sprint.
Much depends on terminology. And if participants in a given discussion do not use the same terminology then it is "tower of Babel" and nothing good is likely to come of that...
Here are what I have found to be the most common definitions of a few terms from various environments:
TASK: A specific "unit of work", mean time approximately 3-5 hrs. (90%<1 man-day).
STORY/PBI: I minimal increment of value. Started and Completed within one iteration.
FEATURE: A collection of related STORY/PBI that provide some functional increment. Typically multiple iterations, but may fit within one.
EPIC: A longer term, high level business Goal.
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@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
You know, I always have that peculiar feeling when someone chimes in amidst an established conversation and says something about definitions.
People are bitching and moaning about this thing they're calling scrum but what they're describing isn't scrum by my experience or by what the Scrum Alliance describes. My point is that taking that article and going on with "scrum sucks!" is retarded.
@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
And then it all derails into a highly abstract conversation about rainbow-colored unicorns.
Welcome to TDWTF.
@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
they are so few and far between that we can write them off as a statistical error
If you want, it makes no difference to me. I'm on one of those teams right now so to me it's not a statistical error. I haven't put up with micromanagement for a couple of decades and I won't stay anywhere I'm not respected so those points aren't valid either. I haven't been doing official scrum for long but I have been doing a version of agile for a long time and every time the team has had a high degree of autonomy and code ownership and all the other stuff that guy was complaining about being missing. So none of these criticisms of agile wash with me.
@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
"true Islam" not being the murderous flavour the majority either practices or endorses, never mind the fact that these "peaceful Muslims" are so few and far between that they are well within error margin,
Oh, I see, you're one of those. Very good, carry on with your bullshit.
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@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
People are bitching and moaning about this thing they're calling scrum but what they're describing isn't scrum by my experience or by what the Scrum Alliance describes.
$20 says Karl Marx had never anticipated totalitarian regimes to come bundled with every single actual communism implementation the planet has seen so far.
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@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
Karl Marx
WTF does that have to do with software development methodologies?
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@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
WTF does that have to do with software development methodologies?
I think he would have been a fan of Kanban
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@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
"true Islam" not being the murderous flavour the majority either practices or endorses, never mind the fact that these "peaceful Muslims" are so few and far between that they are well within error margin,
Wow, isn't it great how you can take a discussion of development methodology and segue right into racism.
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@another_sam said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
WTF does that have to do with software development methodologies?
It looks like WFT can't talk about anything for more than a couple posts without going on racist, anti-Communist screeds. He's like the George Patton of software development.
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@blakeyrat said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
Wow, isn't it great how you can take a discussion of development methodology and segue right into racism.
Welcome to TDWTF! I like that he did that in the exact same post he was complaining about conversations being derailed.
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@jaloopa said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
I think he would have been a fan of Kanban
Many call their software "process" Kanban, but very few are....
If you think yours ins, please post your sequential workflow performed by different people along with how people move up and down (forward/back) this assembly line so that there is always the appropriate number of people at each station to minimize WIP....
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@thecpuwizard said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
If you think yours ins, please post your sequential workflow performed by different people along with how people move up and down (forward/back) this assembly line so that there is always the appropriate number of people at each station to minimize WIP....
My main takeaway from this thread is that @TheCPUWizard is the real decider of whether you're agile or not. Don't worry, you may feel free to document your internal business practices online in the exacting level of detail he requires for his judgment.
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@heterodox said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
feel free to document your internal business practices online
It is not that at all. Rather it is the claiming of Kanban for a variety of approaches that are continuous flow and use a task (or other) board. These can all be great, but unless the two items (along with others, but those are the rarest) are present and active, it is NOT Kanban.
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@blakeyrat said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
@wft said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
"true Islam" not being the murderous flavour the majority either practices or endorses, never mind the fact that these "peaceful Muslims" are so few and far between that they are well within error margin,
Wow, isn't it great how you can take a discussion of development methodology and segue right into racism.
Since when is an ideology a race?
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@blakeyrat said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
. A lot of the time, you don't even realize your made an incorrect assumption on your data structures until after you're written some spec code for a few weeks and you have to go back to the drawing board
This. I've rewritten the vendor and transaction database objects no less than four times in the last month because the requirements keep changing.
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@wft i prefer to go with the best of both worlds... Waterfragile.
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@darkmatter or waterfail?
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@tsaukpaetra said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
I've rewritten the vendor and transaction database objects no less than four times in the last month because the requirements keep changing.
OUCH. Clearly I do not know details of your situation, but I encounter the general aspect often. Two questions come to mind.
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Have the real requirements been changing [i.e. each one was 100% accurate at the time] or something else (e.g. incorrect/missing information)?
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Is there a different design/implementation possible/practical that can be resilient to the specific type of change? (e.g. using a "property bag" instead of fixed fields)?
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@thecpuwizard Why don't you put away the I R Mster Softwre Devlpr Cnsultant!!! hat for just a few minutes and just bitch like the rest of us.
At least you aren't the smug-ass braggart punchable asshole you were a few years ago, but this schtick is nearly as annoying. Nearly.
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@blakeyrat said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
just bitch like the rest of us.
I seek help quite often, so it seems only right to try to give back. I do tend to avoid attempts at serious posts on threads that are clearly bitch fests. Anyone is free to ignore my posts, or reply to them (in any fashion they choose). A fair number of member and I have had chats that have been quite helpful (sometimes to me, others to them, occasionally both) which have resulted from posts on threads.
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@thecpuwizard said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
@tsaukpaetra said in Is there any big software corporation out there still practicing Waterfall?:
I've rewritten the vendor and transaction database objects no less than four times in the last month because the requirements keep changing.
OUCH. Clearly I do not know details of your situation, but I encounter the general aspect often. Two questions come to mind.
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Have the real requirements been changing [i.e. each one was 100% accurate at the time] or something else (e.g. incorrect/missing information)?
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Is there a different design/implementation possible/practical that can be resilient to the specific type of change? (e.g. using a "property bag" instead of fixed fields)?
1 they've just never been fully and clearly fleshed out to begin with. I've described our development environment to be akin to the Wild West, hardly a requirements document, no design document, no approvals, no (or very little) code review, no testing, very disorganized QA if at all.
We're simultaneously building the backend, front-end, and interface with the above in mind, and then somehow expecting everyone's going to hand their part in whenever it's "done" and hoping it all fits.
2 I'm actually implementing a property bag for another one of our programs, because I'm adding support for OnApp to our Master Server program, and that cloud interface is quite a bit different to Azure. But this is as a side project because it's more important to build a store that has nothing to sell than to improve our running architecture....
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