Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

"The second biggest complaint we see from developers? Constantly changing the specs once work has begun." Of course this is called being agile. If everything has to be known before you start work how is this different than waterfall? People don't know what they want or need until they see it. So you have to find some way to let me see it which means writing something based on incomplete information.



Waterfall is all up front. Agile is up front at the task level. Normally when commited to a sprint it doesn't change.


> Waterfall is all up front. Agile is up front at the task level.

Agile isn't a methodology, its a meta-methodology (a set of principles for selecting and dynamically adapting the methodology in use.) If waterfall is the process that produces good results for the set of people you have working on the problems you are addressing, then waterfall is Agile.

What you say is about sprints is accurate about Scrum, but while an Agile shop might use (and especially start with as a baseline) Scrum, Scrum is not the same thing as Agile.

There's a good reason to argue that not committing to requirements at some point so that work can proceed directed at a fixed target is suboptimal in the general case, but arguing whether its Agile or not -- and even moreso describing Agile as definitively being up front at some specific level, is confusing metamethodology with methodology and reducing Agile to a fixed methodology, of which it is very much the antithesis.


That might be more agile, but it's not Agile.




Consider applying for YC's Summer 2025 batch! Applications are open till May 13

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: