Re: Project management melee
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:33:41 +1000
Message-ID: <jr9tqk$fgu$1_at_dont-email.me>
Mladen Gogala wrote,on my timestamp of 9/06/2012 3:40 AM:
> I am having a very interesting discussion with Cary Millsap on his blog:
>
> http://carymillsap.blogspot.com/2012/06/organizational-constraint-
> that.html
>
> The debate is about agile methodology and DBA personnel, which mix well,
> just like oil and water. If someone is interested, plese join the melee.
>
>
>
Hmmm..... Always the same problem: engineering quoted incorrectly. Bulding roads is engineering. The waterfall method in the diagram does not apply to engineering although it looks very nice. If there is ONE thing that was hammered into me in 6 years of studying engineering in uni, it was: feedback loops and their importance for ANY project.
Engineering is all about feedback and how to control it and take advantage of it. Nothing to do with mathematics, although of course those are required for the deterministic aspects of engineering.
The biggest problem with agile methods - and indeed most modern aspects of software development - is that they are not based on ANY sound engineering principles. Feedback or no feedback, there is a LOT more that is wrong with those methods than just feedback. For starters, few use the most basic checks and balances on their execution and results. Nothing to do with engineering.
Software development used to be a discipline of software engineering. But because that is expensive to train people for - and nowadays what is needed is heaps of developers capable of cut-and-paste tons of code - things have slacked off.
Ah well, who cares? DBAs have been cut-off from any responsibility in IT, mainly as a result of Oracle's constant disparaging and deriding of that job in the last 10 years. Don't be too surprised to find that DBAs really don't give a hoot anymore about Oracle. Or any database, for that matter: they're just tools to be used and abused by any would be newb damager with a "kewl" "method" approach.
Cynical, mwah? Never!... Received on Wed Jun 13 2012 - 06:33:41 CDT