> Good quality planing, good quality execution will make a delivery predictable regadless of the projecy management style and how we break down a big task into smaller bits.
From some hard-won experience working with a variety of different teams, I have unfortunately found that good quality planning and execution are far harder to attain than you perhaps imagine. Some of these articles seem to paint software developers as magically perfect beings, with managers being pulled straight from Dilbert. The reality is far more complex. Sometimes one of the people on the team is being an asshat and hoarding knowledge. Sometimes they have overly-strong opinions on languages and frameworks that they're super familiar with, or go to the other extreme and work on only bleeding edge ones that were posted on Hacker News.
I strongly suspect that Agile is used at companies because it's a mildly effective way of curbing these dysfunctions in a team. If you spend time and money hiring the perfect team, then you probably won't need Agile. Think of a situation you do find somewhat commonly where you often have hackers smoothly churning out work with a team they selected perfectly for – early-stage startups. Good early-stage startups are often very picky about who they bring onboard, because an unproductive hire can literally cost you the company. It's possible to reproduce that on a team, but imagine telling your next boss at a run-of-the-mill that you're going to hire slowly over 18 months and very selectively.
From some hard-won experience working with a variety of different teams, I have unfortunately found that good quality planning and execution are far harder to attain than you perhaps imagine. Some of these articles seem to paint software developers as magically perfect beings, with managers being pulled straight from Dilbert. The reality is far more complex. Sometimes one of the people on the team is being an asshat and hoarding knowledge. Sometimes they have overly-strong opinions on languages and frameworks that they're super familiar with, or go to the other extreme and work on only bleeding edge ones that were posted on Hacker News.
I strongly suspect that Agile is used at companies because it's a mildly effective way of curbing these dysfunctions in a team. If you spend time and money hiring the perfect team, then you probably won't need Agile. Think of a situation you do find somewhat commonly where you often have hackers smoothly churning out work with a team they selected perfectly for – early-stage startups. Good early-stage startups are often very picky about who they bring onboard, because an unproductive hire can literally cost you the company. It's possible to reproduce that on a team, but imagine telling your next boss at a run-of-the-mill that you're going to hire slowly over 18 months and very selectively.