What Is "Agile" Anyway?

What is "Agile" anyway?

So...

I feel like my posts are best when I write about things on my mind. And because of my job, "dark agile" and "dark scrum" have been a lot on my mind. "Dark" basically is used to mean "Subversive" or "Pretending to do X, but in fact doing to opposite.

Dark design for example, refers to design that is worse for the users ( Making it harder to say no to cookies than yes for example).

But to talk about dark agile, I have to explain what agile actually is. I also want to do this because agile is super simple. But if you ever want to see a LOT of successful scamming, check out business management consulting. A LOT of people have a vested interest in making it sound a lot more complicated than it is and/or ignore what it actually is in favor of telling companies what they want to hear.

Agile is short for "Agile software development"

First, understanding the problem agile solves:

Small companies can change what they are doing, and how they are doing it really quickly. They are also very good at listening to their developers and put their good ideas into practice.

As companies grow larger, they quickly lose these abilities.

Agile, is a way to keep those abilities in a larger company. This is done by giving each development team freedom to develop however they want ( not WHATever they want ), and to give them as direct a line as possible to whoever is the decision maker for the thing they are developing, which allows them to change what they are developing very quickly, but in a way that still leaves that decision maker happy.

Or in other words, encourage worker empowerment and grassroot organization ( Can you guess why companies REALLY try hard to not actually do agile? :p )

That's it. That is agile... as in, all of it.

You can read the agile manifesto and the agile principles, which flushes out what exact values agile is trying to achieve, but you basically already have all the info

If you are thinking "But what about Scrum?", scrum is a proposed tool to achieve agile. It is not agile, nor is it part of agile. Agile is a goal. Scrum is a tool that may help a company reach that goal.

Btw if we're mutuals and you feel like you always have to start the conversation I'm really sorry, my ADHD means I'm really bad at keeping track of people that aren't literally in front of me so it's very hard for me to keep up with Internet friends, even the ones I love the most cuz I'm either like "oh I wonder how they're doing?" and then do nothing about it or I'm like "oh so and so is messaging me yay! I wonder what's happened in the couple days since we last spoke!!" and they're like "so how was your summer" and I'm like "what?" and the last time we spoke was April.

Tl:dr; please don't read my lack of initiation as lack of caring, I'm just very bad at friendship maintenance skills like time management and task initiation

So I got an email at work telling me to change my password... because I must do that every 2 months...

That is... known security theater ( The security word for "scam" ) this in combination with admin by request (As in, I must give a written explanation for why I want to use my PC) and us having NO clue how our own protocols work means I am now 100% certain that whoever does our security have no idea what they are doing... and that we have no system in place that can do ANY sanity check if the security people know what they are doing...

In other news, I soon have a meeting with my boss where he wants to know how it is going. That is going to be FUN! I am putting a PRESENTATION together!

I consider my job to be "Create value for the company". And that involves telling the company when they are being idiotic.

Maybe the conpany already knows? No. They need to start getting NIS2 certified in August... and they think that they are ready for that, and it will be a easy thing to do...

Good to know. It is now on for me

hey PSA this is not on by default, please enable it by going to settings and checking each blog you got.

Shoutout warframe for having a random side vendor be canon trans and also have the best lines in the game

Yeeeep

advice: add the receiver's email address only after writing the email (no accidental early "hit send"s)