Agile methodologies.

On Sat, 22 Nov 2014 09:39:22 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:

> Mladen Gogala wrote:

>>  On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:14:43 +0000, Drazen Kacar wrote:
>> 
>> > Rohan Tekwissen wrote:
>> > 
>> >>  Experience in Agile and waterfall methodology preferred
>> > 
>> > But not in other methodologies? That's kind of weird, don't you
>> > think?
>> 
>>  Please, be aware that you are attempting to communicate with a
>>  spammer.

I changed the topic to sever the ties with the spammer's thread. During my career as a production DBA, which included prefixes like "lead" or "senior", I have been exposed to infestation by agile methodology and I find it ill suited for the infrastructure projects, mostly the kind of projects that require DBA participation. Agile methodology is characterized by "small steps". There is a need for lot of project managers, daily scum meetings and reporting on the steps. It also assumes the participation of business users.
Data model needs to be well thought out and carefully crafted. Data models are full of logical dependencies, business rules and business decisions. Creating a data model is an intense effort that can be easily messed up by adding tables or entities within daily "small steps" and "sprints". Also, in practice, I see proper testing frequently neglected in favor of speed, with predictable results. Agile project development also makes classic SQL tuning harder, because the units to be tuned are moving targets. However with the new automated tuning, that becomes less of a problem. My experience with agile is mostly negative. DBA people are found to be "slowing us down", "create problems" and "obstruct the projects", in the organization with the goal of churning enormous amounts of the application software out, in short period of time. The last company that I worked for as a DBA employs agile methodology. I was overruled when objecting to writing functions and procedures as a user SYS. The company was extending data dictionary, with functions giving access to various X$ tables. My tenure there lasted about 6 months, after which I looked for another employer.

-- 
Mladen Gogala
The Oracle Whisperer
http://mgogala.byethost5.com