I am noticing a trend at Agile conferences. Fewer and fewer developers are showing up.
I guess I’ve noticed this for a number of years, but it really hit home recently at at a small American conference when someone commented on the lack of developer focused sessions, to which one of the organizers said: “We would add them except the developers never show up!”
What! I thought. That doesn’t make any sense.
Agile started with developers.
Developers (the ones I used to know) loved Agile.
Agile is software. How can you talk Agile without involving the people who create it?
So developers. Why aren’t we showing up at Agile conferences anymore?
Is it because we’ve been hijacked by Scrum professionals, certification wonks, vendors, and other ‘professionals’ who do everything but deliver software?
Is it because the Agile brand has become so diluted and meaningless that it doesn’t stand up for the things it once did? Like writing kick ass software and making customers happy?
Or is it because there has been no really innovations in Agile over the last 10 years and instead of catching up, everyone is falling backwards reverting to 30 day waterfall sprints under the umbrella of Scrum.
And to everyone else, does this even matter.
Does it matter that the people creating the software are no longer at the table?
Are Agile conferences no longer the best place to talk about innovating software?
And where will the next revolution in software delivery come from?
Where have the developers gone? Do we need them? And will they ever come back.
Update: Further comments can be found here on Hacker News.
The Agile Warrior 
May 13, 2014 @ 14:00:38
It’s a vicious circle – I don’t go because there’s nothing for developers… Actually there’s lots of agile developer content at code camps/retreats, etc. these days so that’s where I’ve gone.
May 13, 2014 @ 15:39:35
I hear you Mike. Not surprising. I feel the same way.
Cheers
May 13, 2014 @ 15:57:39
At this point, as far as I can see, Agile is mostly marketing jibber jabber with the goal of making lots of money for trainers and certifications.
Serious sw development has always used quick iterations and good feedback; this is documented back into the Apollo program.
I am not personally interested in Agile conferences, books, training materials, processes, etc. Where the rubber meets the road, it is a lot of playing around by PMs to be buzzword compliant and hopefully the silliness of whatever standup dance & sprint decisions won’t actually interfere with the work getting done to get the product out the door.
May 13, 2014 @ 16:20:39
My last agile/lean development meetups are 45% recycled project managers that are now applying scrum/xp/whatever. The other 45% is someone trying to sell their training.
Some times, only some times, you get that 10% of insight. 5% someone talking (preso) about something useful, 5% talking with someone and starting a nice and productive conversation outside the presentation room.
May 13, 2014 @ 16:33:33
That is my experience also Javier.
No new insights.
Everyone managing.
No one doing.
Cheers
May 13, 2014 @ 16:29:39
When people start spelling the name of a development methodology with a leading capital letter, odds are very good that the methodology has lost all value and meaning already.
May 13, 2014 @ 16:36:16
As a developer, I’m just sick of agile nonsense. Whenever someone tries to recruit me and brags about how agile they are, they might as well tell me they never bathe. I’m interested in technology, not nonsense buzzwords that do nothing more than let useless project managers validate their own worth to themselves.
The real question to ask is not where all the developers are, but why are you non-developers here? All you know is some hokey management methodologies. What use are you to a developer, or anyone with actual technical skills? None. No use.
May 13, 2014 @ 17:07:09
Every comment on this page is cogent and intelligent. Too bad I can’t say the same for agile methodologies.
May 13, 2014 @ 17:35:04
I’ve stopped going due to the large amount of BS that comes has arose over the years… You called it… its the “scrum professionals, certification wonks, vendors, and other ‘professionals’ who do everything but deliver software”! Why would I want to listen to people that have never coded try to tell me how I should deliver code? I might listen to an individual if they were a developer that jumped over to the other side… but most of these people are BA’s or PM’s that know nothing but IT acronyms & try to BS us at every turn.
May 13, 2014 @ 18:52:14
If they have good ideas, why does it matter if they’ve never coded? Do you think that a professional football coach has played every position on the field? Do trombonists dismiss the conductor’s input because he’s never picked up a trombone?
Or test should be whether the ideas work, not who they came from.
Professionals have coaches because it’s useful to have another pair of eyes watching you to see how you can improve. Nobody said coaches have to be any good at doing the thing themselves.
Now, if the ideas are bad, then let’s throw them out. But I do see it as a significant problem today that programmers don’t *really* listen to non-programmers.
May 13, 2014 @ 18:55:29
“why does it matter if they’ve never coded?”
Because experience matters much more than opinion. Especially when it comes from a metaworker who is only covering their ass.
May 13, 2014 @ 19:16:49
EMM: Is a football coach “a metaworker who is only covering their ass”? Is an orchestra conductor telling a trombonist they’re out of tune just giving an “opinion”, worth less than the “experience” of blowing one?
You sound like you have a beef with anyone telling you anything.
May 13, 2014 @ 19:37:42
Barney, your analogy are flawed… a football coach normally understands the rules of the game & how its played. As for conductors in an orchestra… they normally spend years learning music theory, history and the handful that I know personally can play many instruments. The vast majority of PM’s, BA’s & Scrum masters don’t even understand the simplest things in IT. I wont even get into how both music & football are free flowing arts & programming is mechanical.
May 14, 2014 @ 12:19:36
“The vast majority of PM’s, BA’s & Scrum masters don’t even understand the simplest things in IT.”
Josh, sorry for asking, but where do you come from? I’ve only been in the industry for just a couple of years, but in every company that I worked for, all PMs, POs and SMs were seasoned engineers, with several years of experience in coding (more than me most of the time). That was the policy in all companies that I worked for (not just startups, but big companies like Ericsson too).
May 13, 2014 @ 20:43:00
Agile was a new thing to most devs and it’s not anymore.
As a dev, we like to focus more on results than it what process we follow. Of course process are important, but there are so many variables and things to discuss, like testing, TDD, etc, that there is no that much space for “discuss agile”. And maybe because there is not much to discuss. Maybe managers not used to it, now that a lot of companies adopted and require it, want to know more about it, but not devs.
May 13, 2014 @ 21:49:20
That’s the first time in a long while I ve read such an honest and accurate account of the sate of Agile. Congrats!
Now the hard truth: Devs (proper hardcore professionals that are passionate about their craft) will never come for exactly the sad state of affairs that you so accurately described above.
May 14, 2014 @ 00:02:44
Personally, I learned Agile (just as I learned waterfall before it), and moved on. I continue to use it when it benefits a problem domain. I think Agile is in danger of becoming a buzzword for the process of training metaworkers without relevant experience how to understand and speak the language of developers.
May 14, 2014 @ 01:15:50
Hmmm, I guess I never thought The Agile Samurai was about samurai. But to the original point, I’m surprised the average developers ever went to agile conferences. As DeMarco and Lister pointed out in Peopleware long ago, developers’ have (or had) lots of books on C++, network protocols, etc, but not on how to be better developers. I can see why the developers of agile methods gathered to compare ideas but not beyond them. Perhaps the others were paid to go by their companies.
May 14, 2014 @ 03:35:16
14 or 21 day waterfall death march sprints. I realized the switch was made when i was asked for a commitment to n story points which did correlate directly to hours.
They (you know who they are) never wanted estimates. They always wanted commitments and they used Scrum to tunnel it in. I will participate and I will commit to doing the best I can to complete the work in the estimated time but when it is clear that more has been learned and the estimate has changed, you will not hold me to a commitment to have completed those “story points” within the sprint because I will not have made that commitment. If that means I have to move on to a more enlightened code shop, so be it.
They love them some process, especially if they can fool themselves into believing that the process is deterministic.
Is it a conference or a seething pool of confirmation bias?
Just say “No!”
Software Development Linkopedia May 2014 | Agile - ScrumXP
May 26, 2014 @ 21:11:53
May 28, 2014 @ 19:43:05
I went to a lot of Lean branded events last year and saw plenty of devs. Agile (the brand) has become management speak.
Jun 05, 2014 @ 09:31:12
I am a PM (put down the knives!) I also spent 10 years as a developer and 4 as a Dev Team leader before becoming a PM. However in the short time I’ve not been coding things have moved on and I’m losing touch. I know this will probably only get worse.
I’ve also never been to an agile conference or have any agile quals.
However in my view agile isn’t just a buzzword, it is misappropriated by people in a number of ways which you guys have already said however the most common I’ve seen is non IT management using it to mean “I can change my mind as many times as I want and still deliver on the same day as we’re agile now”
From a devs point of view Agile isn’t too hard to grasp its a way of thinking and working but we are used to these changes (as our IDEs and languages move forward) so actually I say we need non devs at these conferences. We need the entire team and business to grasp what agile is because if they don’t and only the devs really get it, then THAT is when it fails.
In at least 2 of my companies I have been told “We’ll lead by example from the dev teams and then others will pick it up”. Well it doesn’t work, this Ninja approach to introduce agile by stealth falls over every time in large companies. At best you get the Water Scrum Fall, and at worst you get severe misunderstanding around the business and then IT gets the flak when “Agile doesn’t work” and becomes a dirty word for the next year or so.
So what I’m saying is we might not like it but we need the non technical staff and we need them to understand how we deliver good software, how to sell our services and how to work with the customer. Embrace the fact that non devs are attending.
Perhaps the conference providers could be a little more savy and create a couple of strands a Dev / Technical Strand for talks and a Business / Mgmt strand.
Jun 05, 2014 @ 12:12:19
Richard, this is a great thoughtful reply, and I thank you for it.
You are right. We do need others (non-devs) at these conferences. I think what myself and others were feeling is the loss of nostalgia that comes when your baby grows up, and enters the larger world.
This is how it feels as a programmer seeing Agile become accepted in the others streams of development. And maybe we’ve become victims of our own success (as I remember a goal at early conferences was trying to figure out how to get testers, analysts, and PMs to attend). Mission accomplished!
You make some great points. Maybe it’s not all bad. And maybe it’s just a part of Agile growing up.
Thanks for your thoughts.