In a nutshell, why do a lot of developers dislike Agile?
Hi! Early Agile person here, but I hate what the term Agile has become. [1] I think there are a lot of good reasons to grumble about Agile, especially when management use it as a stick to beat developers. But I don&#x27;t think the problem described here is one of them.<p>I think expecting business to know what they want is a mistake. When my dad was making software in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we were mainly automating existing business process, so we could draft behind all the hard work done working out the right paper forms and reports. But modern software comes from a process of experimentation and discovery, competition and evolution. As the people who understand the technology best, we should be as part of that process from beginning to end.<p>This analogy is misleading because software gives us power that we don&#x27;t have in the real world. If we start with port-a-potties and want real bathrooms, we just have to change the description of a bathroom and the computer will do the rest. In software, if you are disciplined about automated testing, refactoring, and keeping up with technical debt, an evolving architecture is totally doable.<p>I think where people fall down is that they don&#x27;t believe that managers will give them enough time to keep things clean as they go. And I agree, they won&#x27;t. You have to <i>take</i> the time. But if you do it from day one you can do it gradually and incrementally. You can gradually redirect management pressure away from developers and toward making better product choices.<p>So please let&#x27;s take control of our working conditions back. We&#x27;re professionals, and we can say, &quot;No, I&#x27;m still writing tests. That&#x27;s a best practice, and it would be negligent for me to leave that out.&quot; But we can do that while delivering incrementally, so that no week goes by without the business getting some new benefit in production.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;agilefocus.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;02&#x2F;21&#x2F;agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;agilefocus.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;02&#x2F;21&#x2F;agiles-second-chasm-and-how...</a>