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Argh business speak

89 replies

StealthPolarBear · 11/03/2019 11:33

"lenses" grrrrrr

OP posts:
DisplayPurposesOnly · 12/03/2019 08:33

Pretty sure that agile means 'make it up as you go along and if what you're doing doesn't work, try it another way'.

TakenForSlanted · 12/03/2019 09:40

Pretty sure that agile means 'make it up as you go along and if what you're doing doesn't work, try it another way'.

Not the first part, but - to some extent at least - absolutely yes to the second. And that's actually a good thing, too. It's pragmatic and goal oriented and should be practiced absolutely anywhere.

The problem with agile is that it usually isn't. You can't simply refuse to manage and then call this 'agile'. That's not what it's meant to be about.

Having said that, agile the way it's meant to be practiced is not a buzz word or business speak at all but a way of doing things that very much comes out of lessons learned on how fuckups have previously been achieved. I'm a big fan of e.g. welcoming rather than fighting change when it's obvious the original idea isn't going to pan out. Or of focussing on delivering results instead of producing mountains of paper. That's all good, pragmatic stuff that works very well in practice.

SciFiRules · 12/03/2019 09:50

Ah yes "Agile" software development without planning! Why oh why to individuals not understand it may be an acceptable paradigm for low integrity Web development but not actually software engineering, particularly in safety critical systems.

SciFiRules · 12/03/2019 09:56

Does anyone remember "extreme programming"?

bingoitsadingo · 12/03/2019 10:09

Let's take a deep dive into some blue sky thinking!

The easiest way to make yourself sound dumb is to misuse "myself" or "yourself" to try and sound more formal/intelligence, when I/you are actually correct. Estate agents and recruiters seem particularly bad for this!

Moving forward, I'll loop back to touch base with yourself.
Or, yano, you could email me next week Hmm

StealthPolarBear · 12/03/2019 10:39

Oooh yes xp and pair programming.
I did that with a colleague once, I did the arrows, she did the space bar. When we worked on the code individually we left helpful comments such as "--this seems to be updating the data in the database, not sure why"
"--yer a tit, you'd left the trigger on the table on"

OP posts:
Grace212 · 12/03/2019 11:24

I think "boiling the ocean" is for when someone is overdoing it, yes.

I used to particularly hate "can we take this forward" but it was used by a boss who actually meant "please do this" and was referring to really small tasks. So if it was "book this restaurant" I was tempted to say "so, moving it forward means what, write the number down and doodle some flowers around it?"

"agile" is being used a lot - I'm pretty sure it's being misused but I cba to look up what the real Agile is.

TakenForSlanted · 12/03/2019 19:59

SciFiRules, see, I've actually delivered safety relevant (if not safety critical; sadly European norms pretty much prescribe a proven-not-to-work V-model approach there) systems in an agile manner. And with great success, too.

Speaking as someone who actually delivers multi-million projects in practice, I really, really welcome any methodology or other mechanism that prevents me from getting an email along the lines of 'hi Taken, After 3 years of work on this thing we discovered during acceptance tests that we may have somehow sort of ish got some fundamental assumptions wrong when we tendered this stuff half a decade ago. Pls fix! PS: we realise this wasn't in the original requirements, but if you could also re-do months worth of work at no additional cost that would be perfect'. And that's pretty much my experience of the V-model in a nutshell.

Agile, properly done, prevents this from happening.

SurgeHopper · 12/03/2019 20:32

Where do you work?!

SciFiRules · 13/03/2019 10:59

I would point out that the value model does not prescribe a waterfall approach. Iterative development is a good aproach but I really hate the implementation of agile. Usually it's farcical and fails to consider future development. I see your agile and raise you continuous integration! The one thing we can agree on is that there will be a new methodology along soon to a sw house near you!

SciFiRules · 13/03/2019 11:00

V module not value model - auto txt grrr!

SciFiRules · 13/03/2019 11:02

Vonna model even... I really am having a fat thumbs day!

Grace212 · 13/03/2019 11:20

It's okay SciFi, you did pretty well otherwise Grin

wonder if OP has set her idea free in the forest yet!

AdamNichol · 13/03/2019 11:24

I work in digital service design. We have a vocabulary that is meaningful to us.
We work in lean multi-disciplinary teams under an agile framework to develop user-centred services, with a rapid reiteration process to deliver a minimum viable product early and release value.
All these phrases caught on as buzzwords for people that have no understanding of what they mean (just that they were very good in improving the way many things were done). So agile became lurch from crisis to crisis. Lean became fire as many people as possible and cut wages. MVP became any old cobbled together in a rush.

Quick crib sheet:
User-centred design - you know nothing, so stop building things then testing them on an unsuspecting world (who are probably unimpressed with your efforts). Instead, use qualified researchers to uncover what people are trying to achieve, then start building things that service this need.
Agile / Re-iteration / MVP - Start with the biggest need first. Keep close contact with the ultimate users of your thing to ensure it works and is easy to use (people don't use things the way you think they will). Be prepared to frequently rethink. Get your service out there helping people ASAP and add additional needs in due course.
Lean / multi-disciplinary team - create a team of people who have a specific skill to lend, avoid unnecessary layers of management (self-organising is best) and governance (need less of this if truly user-centred).

My choice for hated term (other than socialising documents, though my better half hates the phrase 'capture' as in capture learning) is one that occurs frequently in blogs about agile projects: it's an oddly self-deprecating phrase, but lots of industry leaders say they have 'recently been thinking about (x)' - what they are referring to is months of investigation into (x), not just sitting at the desk for 5 mins.

AdamNichol · 13/03/2019 11:27

An easy way to view agile / mvp and early value release

Argh business speak
StealthPolarBear · 13/03/2019 13:46

Adam I think that's blog speak. I notice that sort of thing too "just chatting to about..."
You mean you've had a series of formal meetings and telephone calls with strict agendas?
I'm afraid I haven't floated my new phrase. I could have done but I'm too chicken.

OP posts:
AdamNichol · 13/03/2019 14:13

Project delivery seems to enjoy aviation-themed vocabulary: all projects take flight, have a flight path, need landing; and even air-craft control when dealing with complex multi-project ventures

Spiderbanana · 13/03/2019 14:15

Just going to leave this here..

Argh business speak
PH03b3 · 13/03/2019 14:30

"guys" fuck off.

PH03b3 · 13/03/2019 14:37

Oh yes and fecking sanity check

ScreamingValenta · 13/03/2019 17:20

AdamNichol

Don't forget 'in flight' work too. As in stuff you might be half-way through finishing when a system change comes in.

SciFiRules · 13/03/2019 18:12

Going back to my early ears in US owned UK organisations: "leveraging synergies"
Grrr

Grace212 · 13/03/2019 18:31

in flight reminds me...

who else hates "on boarding"?

TakenForSlanted · 13/03/2019 18:40

Not a fan of 'onboarding' but I also don't like 'rolling-on' (they're colleagues, not trains).

StealthPolarBear · 13/03/2019 19:01

Some of you are my colleagues in sure. I've heard on boarding for the first time in the last few weeks.

OP posts: