Perhaps the largest change over the forty years was the transition from software that shipped once every six months and had to last for years in production, to something that can ship every few minutes with a lifetime hours to a week.
During the era of shipped software (long cycle times) a hardware / software co-design model worked well to work out the customer requirements, dependencies, documentation, training materials, marketing, sales sheets, software, installation tools, and all manner of support modifications. Some of that cross-team communications takes more time and coordination than may be available in a two week sprint.
There were also the constraints of the release schedule burnt into everyones brain. So many things depended upon your shipping date that you dared not miss it. Sure, agile / scrum / whatever enables you to ship something a bit later, but there was nothing like the pressure cooker of everyone working as a team to make their delivery date. Requirements, in my rosy recollection, became very clear - things were in or out, not maybe.
Moving from large shipped software to web applications in 1999 offered any number of advantages, but it was quite difficult to keep the non-coders up to date with features and capabilities. Understanding doesn't always move at the same speed for all people.
What I'm going to say next may not be everyone's experience, but the two week sprint has started to seem like a convenient way to set and miss objectives; i.e., we can put it into the next sprint. Sure, I understand that planning is a black art in some cases, but always missing your commitments and making the same statement indicates, to me, that there's a problem with the absorption of the agile development model.
Product development and execution is a very hard process for all involved. Brooks had it wright, there are no silver bullets and the web seems to proliferate the belief that such things actually do exist.
I miss Tops-20 CMDJSYS sometimes.
I don't miss VAX/VMS.
SunOS was pretty darned scrappy at the beginning.
Usenet prior to the 1994 Apocalypse On Line (AOL).
I miss Fujitsu mechanical keyboards (so much noisy awesomeness).
I miss having an office with two or three people, we had so much fun and worked so darned hard together. We remain terrific friends 30+ years later.
During the era of shipped software (long cycle times) a hardware / software co-design model worked well to work out the customer requirements, dependencies, documentation, training materials, marketing, sales sheets, software, installation tools, and all manner of support modifications. Some of that cross-team communications takes more time and coordination than may be available in a two week sprint.
There were also the constraints of the release schedule burnt into everyones brain. So many things depended upon your shipping date that you dared not miss it. Sure, agile / scrum / whatever enables you to ship something a bit later, but there was nothing like the pressure cooker of everyone working as a team to make their delivery date. Requirements, in my rosy recollection, became very clear - things were in or out, not maybe.
Moving from large shipped software to web applications in 1999 offered any number of advantages, but it was quite difficult to keep the non-coders up to date with features and capabilities. Understanding doesn't always move at the same speed for all people.
What I'm going to say next may not be everyone's experience, but the two week sprint has started to seem like a convenient way to set and miss objectives; i.e., we can put it into the next sprint. Sure, I understand that planning is a black art in some cases, but always missing your commitments and making the same statement indicates, to me, that there's a problem with the absorption of the agile development model.
Product development and execution is a very hard process for all involved. Brooks had it wright, there are no silver bullets and the web seems to proliferate the belief that such things actually do exist.
I miss Tops-20 CMDJSYS sometimes. I don't miss VAX/VMS. SunOS was pretty darned scrappy at the beginning. Usenet prior to the 1994 Apocalypse On Line (AOL). I miss Fujitsu mechanical keyboards (so much noisy awesomeness). I miss having an office with two or three people, we had so much fun and worked so darned hard together. We remain terrific friends 30+ years later.