Waterfall Over Agile In 2023???

foreign [Music] the things that haven't changed that are really significant are the power structures around software development and until those change the the test driven developments of the world and the continuous Integrations of the world are shadows cast by the power structure and you can't change the shadow without changing the reality and that's kind of where it feels like to me there's still so much potential in software development that's unrealized and yet it's the human problems that we need progress on if we're going to actually make any fundamental lasting change yeah it seems to me that it's kind of an interestingly uh one of the reasons that I enjoy I've enjoyed my career in software development is that it seems to me that it's it's quite a deep profession there was some kind of profound ideas and truths at the heart of software development you know this idea of dealing with this ephemeral stuff called information and and that seems like you know modern physics think you know he's starting to see that as a fairly deep and profound idea in its own right but the oh one of the ideas that I I I I I thought for a while now that the ad the agile movement so I think it has had a positive impact but I'm starting to think of it more a bit like you know Newtonian mechanics versus general relativity it was it was a rough a good approximation of where we need to get to but it wasn't kind of the you know that more things came will come later that kind of refine a picture of some of those things but there's there's still deep truth in it so so that there's nothing that I would you know I I still tell people to go and read the agile Manifesto and say you know if you want to know what agile is about look at that and when you're doing all of that let's talk again you know it's you know that's that's the starting point it seems to me so the one one of the big positives I would say that that you and your your colleagues that some you know the original signatories have met yeah they're middle-aged white guys yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah all those middle-aged white guys in the involver is the the but the impact is that you know 25 years ago if you'd asked any organization on average unless they were weird like yours or mine you know they would have said oh yes we're doing waterfall and now they don't is back it's back Dave I mean maybe this is a Silicon Valley thing but I I hear smart people unironically say well the first thing you have to do is to do a thorough survey of the market opportunity yeah and then the design organization produces the wireframes and then the programmers do that and that's how you build successful software and and it's just not and no successful software has been built that way nothing that has had any kind of outsized impact and yet that's exactly the waterfall and the there's new new words put to it but it's it's the same sequence the same and it doesn't work for all the reasons that it never worked and yet the fiction is so attractive that people are going to return to it yeah I I I I I certainly think I I certainly agree that it never went away I I haven't I haven't seen I haven't seen the kind of resurgence so the way that I would I would have said I would have put it was that the um the way that I would have perceived it was that was that you know most organizations pay lip service to working in an agile way but really under the covers we're still doing the same old things that aligned nicely with him you know non-technical management structures in the organization thought things worked it's not only there I'm not trying to blame managers and not technologists it's it's our fault too but but oh absolutely but yeah so the the change I've seen in the past five or ten years is is there was a period where yeah you would be ashamed to say something that was obviously water Folly and now people say say it as if they should be proud of it okay well I I haven't seen that yet and I hope that I don't but but but but certainly certainly you know I don't think yeah I I I I I don't think the fight against waterfall has gone away because oh no you know that's I suppose when you think simplistically it it's alluring it would be nice if you could chuck all those perfect predictions of the future it's just that you can't I I remember one of my early extreme programming workshops the guy arms folded on the front row but arms folded this was in Denmark just all day long just skeptical skeptical skeptical and then right at the end of the day just as things were rewinding down his hand goes up and I said uh yes sir he said uh you know and I've been going through all the Embrace change you know extreme programming and Brace change that's really that is the heart of it yeah and I've been going through all the different ways that we Embrace change in extreme programming and so this hand goes up and he says wouldn't it be easier to just do it right the first time I said yes yes sir it would and that's just not one of my options so I have to adapt but sure it would be easier to do it right the first time if you knew what it was and you knew how to do it right and the Target didn't change and the team did on and on and on and on and on there's lots of reasons why that's an absurd statement yep and yet sure it would be easier that's that's that's one of the items one of the ideas I I read this book a few years ago which we which I I've mentioned a few times to friends and on here occasionally it's it's a it's a book about physics it's a book about the philosophy of science by a guy called David Deutsch from um from uh Oxford uh he's a professor uh and he he basically invented the idea of quantum computation in the sense of coming up with algorithms and stuff so Feynman and Steph did the original idea but the but David Deutsch is a you know he's a smart he's a brilliant guy but you wrote this you wrote this amazing book called the beginning of infinity and he was talking about science as being driven by good explanations and being you know um there are some ideas that are kind of infinite in scope and one of the examples he gives in the book is the difference between pictorial versions of writing and alphabetic versions of writing if you you know a pictorial version of writing is fine as long as you and I both know the symbol for a particular word and then it's not fine if I use a symbol that you've never seen before or you speak a word that I don't know the symbol for um whereas alphabetic writing is that we try and mimic the sounds and so we can write down a word we'll spell it wrong we might spell it wrong but we can write down a word that we've never seen you can speak a word that you've never heard before and those sorts of things so he's saying you know that's one of the ideas and and to me one of the big steps of agility Beyond waterfall was that it was one of those steps to Infinity if I start a project on day one and I've got no bloody idea about what the customers really want which is the truth and and and and what to do next which is usually the truth and you know I'm going to work to try and find those things out and discover and learn that's kind of an open-ended way of working whereas if I start of a waterfall ultimately if I've got to start off with a plan I am fundamentally somehow limited to you know the scope of my brain the scope of you know the organizational context in which I can come up with that some some of the narrow version of that Perfection that your your Danish student was talking about so it's it's I I liked that idea because I I think that's I think that's that's one of the things that seems so I still talk in terms of you know the the importance of agile for those reasons

Channel: Continuous Delivery

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Keywords: agile vs waterfall methodology, agile vs waterfall software development, agile vs waterfall difference, agile vs waterfall, agile methodology, waterfall methodology, waterfall, agile, kent beck, kent beck interview, engineering room, continuous delivery, dave farley, software engineering, software development, computer science, programming, software podcast

Id: J4ihLROXzPk

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023