Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9rx | Hacker News Reader

> I'm a VP of Engineering ... Happy to discuss and defend any of it.

The original Agile Manifesto abolishes VP roles. Are these amendments an effort to try and save your job?

Don't distract. I'm genuinely trying to help us figure out how to build quality software, using AI, while avoiding all the problems we're seeing on so many teams.

No distraction. Genuine question. The whole point of the Agile Manifesto is to encourage removal of VP and similar roles from an organization; turning to a flat organizational structure. What motivates you, a VP, to latch onto that? How do you think that will help (with or without amendments)? Do you, perhaps, think in the age of AI your org will be better off if you 'step down' into a development/AI steerer role?

I was around when the agile manifesto was drafted. It wasn't about eliminating hierarchy in organizations. That's something that started happening later, around and after 2010. The agile manifesto was singularly focused at helping people see how to deliver software without leaning on the old waterfall methodologies.

The Agile Manifesto was published in 2001. You asserted earlier your software career began in 2006. What brought you to the Wasatch Mountains at that time when you had no ties to the industry?

Winston Royce, in his book, invented the waterfall methodology as a hypothetical of what not to do in order to help explain his core thesis. It is not a real thing. Why do you suggest the Agile Manifesto was created to help avoid leaning on a strawman?

I'm curious: where exactly does it abolish VP roles? I don't see it.

The whole thing? That is what Agile Manifesto, and the associated 12 principles, is about: A thought experiment about flat organizational structures. Each of the 12 principles outline the things one needs to consider when they don't have a manager taking watch.

Where you find a VP, Agile isn't applicable. At least not in its entirety. It it is likely that you can still cherry-pick some ideas from it to apply to your non-Agile situation. "Do your manager's job for them" is often considered common wisdom after all.

You must have worked in some very unhealthy teams where psychological safety wasn't present. I'm sorry that happened. But don't confuse your experiences with that of everyone else's. There are lots of teams that are agile from the top down, including those that happen to hold a title with VP in the name.

No, words in a document do not change by an unrelated party having living some kind of experience. Not even if that experience is negative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com