The Longflow Manifesto
I know this was intended with a good heart, but it seems very naive to me. At times I have hated agile &amp; scrum. I have hated interruptions, I have hated meetings, and I have hated deadlines. I&#x27;ve tried to explain to management that they were shooting themselves in the foot by adding overhead with meetings and status reports. With hindsight, I now believe I was wrong.<p>As an engineer, this sounds like bliss. Sit quietly by myself without interruptions and solve the problems of my choosing in whatever way I consider the highest quality. It sounds like grad school.<p>As a manager &amp; business owner this sounds like a nightmare. Engineers who refuse to make &amp; meet deadlines, refuse to communicate &amp; report status regularly, and work on problems of their own choosing, it adds up to people I can&#x27;t make very good use of, and work getting done that doesn&#x27;t contribute meaningfully to the bottom line.<p>There&#x27;s a reason you need regular communication: because people walk out of planning meetings with different ideas in their head, even when everyone thinks they agree. If you don&#x27;t follow up often, nobody will get what they expect. Realizing that as a programmer, even if it&#x27;s painful, that I need regular checkins in order to be more useful to the organization, that is something that didn&#x27;t happen early enough in my career.