I have just been watching James Brokenshire MP in front of a parliamentary select committee. Talking about various issues in immigration and passports.
Anyways the thing that really stood out was how little he knows about the IT approaches he is defending.
In answer to questions about "agile" the methodology his response was its all about phased work, and phased releases. What a lot of nonsense. Phased work can be a part of many approaches, including waterfall and agile, but is not something that sets "agile" apart. It's clear the rumours of how crap "agile" can be have reached the committee members, but again they don’t appear to have the basic understanding of why it's just as bad as the old approaches, as implemented in the public sector, or any understanding of which projects or parts of projects are best suited to it.
Really that clown Liam Maxwell and the cabinet office ramming this stuff down people's throats is a shambles, and not helping at all.
The real problems with public sector IT being a bit simpler to understand, but it's not much to do with the methodology, and everything to do with hiring the wrong people into the wrong posts.
So as usual the immigration and passport IT projects are late, failing, etc. and apparently "agile" is going to improve that, my arse.
Give me strength
I do think it was a clever trick calling it "agile", as agile the business word in the dictionary was a very admirable thing to be before this methodology highjacked it. Rather like calling a methodology "motherhood and applepies". Shame the "agile" methodology is often not "Able to think and understand quickly" as the word implies.
Anyways the thing that really stood out was how little he knows about the IT approaches he is defending.
In answer to questions about "agile" the methodology his response was its all about phased work, and phased releases. What a lot of nonsense. Phased work can be a part of many approaches, including waterfall and agile, but is not something that sets "agile" apart. It's clear the rumours of how crap "agile" can be have reached the committee members, but again they don’t appear to have the basic understanding of why it's just as bad as the old approaches, as implemented in the public sector, or any understanding of which projects or parts of projects are best suited to it.
Really that clown Liam Maxwell and the cabinet office ramming this stuff down people's throats is a shambles, and not helping at all.
The real problems with public sector IT being a bit simpler to understand, but it's not much to do with the methodology, and everything to do with hiring the wrong people into the wrong posts.
So as usual the immigration and passport IT projects are late, failing, etc. and apparently "agile" is going to improve that, my arse.
Give me strength
I do think it was a clever trick calling it "agile", as agile the business word in the dictionary was a very admirable thing to be before this methodology highjacked it. Rather like calling a methodology "motherhood and applepies". Shame the "agile" methodology is often not "Able to think and understand quickly" as the word implies.
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