When I had first started hearing about Agile practices, although they weren’t named that (usually XP) over 10 years ago there were some things that were scary, and some things that were cool.\u00a0 Pairing seemed scary and I wondered how long it would be until misapplication of that occurred.\u00a0 But the planning for a reasonable within limits set of features to deliver to maintain life balance and productivity made me say: FINALLY!!!\u00a0 It was an XP valued attribute.<\/p>\n
For instance, we know that if a football player had to participate in 3 games a week pretty soon there would be no football players.\u00a0 Development is mentally tiring — it has its limits.\u00a0 Creativity has no bounds in engineering — time off can equal a solution.\u00a0 Its just how we work and no amount of\u00a0 forcing the issue will change that.<\/p>\n
For a while it seemed that this would be the case — work hard for 40 hours, have time off — plan it all and you are golden.\u00a0 After doing RUP and etc. and just being in tech we knew there was a rollercoaster of hours, but maybe Agile could help make those hour mountains (like 16\u00a0 hour days) turn into manageable hills.<\/p>\n
Something changed though.\u00a0\u00a0 This idea of craftmanship; which in addition to a good developer also entails that the said developer is completely dedicated and working, of their own volition, tons and tons of hours because they LOVE to do it.\u00a0 Companies are looking for people who not only put in a work week, they put in a work weekend, nights (those people who email at 2 am CHECKED IT IN!!!) and walk on water with their blogs and projects etc.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like the cow in Hitch hiker’s guide: it wanted to be eaten.<\/p>\n
I can’t remember the guy who first said it in an IT context, but he quoted an advertisement for the pony express that went something like “Young men, preferably orphans, wanted.”\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I am hearing that all over now.\u00a0 And I am calling out this misuse of the word “craftsman.”\u00a0 The arts and crafts movement was a movement against <\/em>this very thing.\u00a0 Just read Morris and Ruskin, the founders of the movement almost 150 years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the big pieces of the movement was to allow a worker to create the entire piece . . .\u00a0 as modern Agile addressed this or used this?<\/p>\n No, not really.\u00a0 Just take a simple application in an Agile management tool.\u00a0 The parts are broken down over and over — a developer may never see a single outcome of their work.\u00a0\u00a0 So the satisfaction goes away.\u00a0 So, the so-called craftsman will never really like to do what they are doing having lost autonomy over what they are doing to the higher ups.\u00a0 And, of course, life balance is lost.<\/p>\n So here is my statement:\u00a0 everyone is different, and people are craftsman at different levels.\u00a0 If a company requires this modern Agile assembly line environment they very simply should not try to hire the people that are fanatical craftsman; its a lose-lose for both sides.\u00a0 The company won’t let the craftsman work in the manner the person wants, ensuing in the unhappiness and less productivity of that person.<\/p>\n All places can still benefit from the ideas of modern building methodologies but they have to be kept in perspective.\u00a0 Life balance is just another way of saying that people get tired, and need time off to work well.\u00a0\u00a0 Let’s not ignore the realities of physiology to accommodate some sort of strange twist on a good idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I had first started hearing about Agile practices, although they weren’t named that (usually XP) over 10 years ago there were some things that were scary, and some things that were cool.\u00a0 Pairing seemed scary and I wondered how long it would be until misapplication of that occurred.\u00a0 But the planning for a reasonable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/10kdev.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}