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Comment by joslin01 | Hacker News Reader

> but throwing management methodology out the window and hoping that "good people" just somehow summon good software into being is comically naive.

Maybe so, but to play devil's advocate, it's Valve's entire business model.

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To be picky, it's valve's management model, their business model is just to be a marketplace/hat vendor, allowing transactions on other people's work.

I'm long past the point of viewing them as a company selling software.

And given their poor history in putting out new games and content, I'm honestly not too impressed by Valve as of late.

Thanks, you're right.

To further your advocacy... how many successful examples can you point to outside of Valve? How does that compare to the number of groups that are using some form of agile methodology to produce a successful product?

None. Like I said below, I'm not taking a stance. I practice "agile" at my company, but Valve's existence does refute the claim that it's comically naive.

Now, if I had to offer my 2 cents why it works at Valve and not others -- games are deeply creative. You actually want your engineers to go off in their own little world and somehow capture the sparks that fly. It's nearly impossible to do this with some sprint model ("OK guys, creative thinking sprint! let's go!").

To re-iterate, the reason why it doesn't work with games is sprints are output-driven yet the creative output is not so easy to capture in this manner. Its origin is mysterious and subject to "ah ha!" moments whenever/wherever. This is why games must instead focus on process (hire the best, let them do whatever) and take a hit on strict output-driven management.

Yet, the big dogs have been pushing one game out after another. For example, WoW got bought by Activision and they couldn't get new expansions out soon enough. One of the most popular MMOs, Ultima Online, was bought by EA and they immediately started their expansion line of junk and ruined the game. This wears down on the overall brand of the game. Ultimately, output-driven management of games is a sure way to lose the creativity and balance necessary to create a gem.

Which caused SteamOS to be DOA and made "HL3/Episode 3 never" into an internet-wide inside joke. Not the best example you could have chosen.

I would say that their business goals have just changed over time, they went from being a company that spits out games, to a company that spits out money. While the end results have changed there is still underlying software that powers all of these things. Look at the in game cosmetics economy that has sprung up around dota2 and cs:go. If anything this is the definition of being Agile.

"Spits out money" isn't a business strategy. They've simply found distribution to be more profitable than production.

Forgive me, but I'm not making a stance. I'm just pointing out this is generally Valve's game-plan.

When I worked at certain top software companies the people I worked with were often so talented and, most importantly, cared enough about the work they did that we could have produced great software with any form of process. In fact, we often started with "base Scrum" and about 6 or so months in we would have a completely modified version of Scrum.

My point is, I don't think Valve is hiring average or below average people. Their process works for them because great people make any process work. Or maybe great people just make their own process, which is the most Agile-y of Agile things you can possibly do.

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