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Comment by mephitix | Hacker News Reader

The only two experiences I had with Pivotal were with RabbitMQ (a very well designed product) and with Pivotal Tracker - I tried it about a year ago. I felt like I was fighting the software; they were extremely stubborn about adhering to Scrum 'best practices' that may not work in practice.

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The thing is, their flavor of Agile development absolutely does work in practice, and it is hands down the most reliable way to build great software I have ever seen. However it only works if it is pretty much 100% adhered to, hence the stubbornness.

Or alternatively, its a rainmaker situation, like a lot of Agile methodologies.

We’re currently considering PCF and their methodology. The VP pushing it has said that the cost means it has to be a success. Or, to be more clear, management knows their necks are on the block if they screw up a very overtly expensive culture change.

Not sure how honest the metrics around success will actually be...

I got to work with some Pivots at their office about a decade ago and learned to use Tracker from them. It's the only system I've ever seen that works well and gives predictable results over time.

Almost every company I've been at has used abhorrent alternatives like Asana, Jira, etc. and they've been consistently awful experiences.

Jira is very configurable, so awful Jira experiences are often due to local choices of fields, workflow, etc.

I tried and eventually got tired of Jira, Trello, Team Foundation Server, and Pivotal Tracker.

The one tool that I've been loving for the past year is http://clubhouse.io. Such a well-designed product and extremely flexible (I think it could fit most teams' requirements around Agile/Kanban/etc.)

I will check it out. Thanks!

Their consulting practice is similar. They won't sign on unless your people adopt their methodology 100% (pairing, etc) Guess it's nice to be able to be that choosy about clients.

I worked for a company (subsidiary of Siemens) who adopted that horrendous Scrum methodology.

It was the absolute __worst__ year of my life. I had to pair with people non-stop even when __fixing bugs__. There were zounds of stupid rules which did not make sense whatsoever.

Perfect example of forcing a methodology on a company where it will never work.

I really like Pivotal products though. RabbitMQ is superb, and although Spring Boot is really slow and has its problems I use it on projects where performance is not important.

It's not Scrum. It's Extreme Programming. It works fantastically well, even when you're __fixing bugs__. The whole idea is that you need to be paired so that two people can understand and problem solve around the bug. You end up with twice the understanding that you had before. It's worth it.

Here's a radical thought - maybe Extreme Programming (I still think this is a genius marketing name :) works for some people and doesn't work for others?

After trying so many of these methodologies I've come to realize that people just work differently. It's self-defeating to try to push Extreme Programming or whatever on someone who prefers and is efficient at working alone.

Maybe adopt some of Scrum/XP/whatever that can be adopted at a high-level, but trying to push it through a team composed of people with different personalities and different ways of working just defeats the entire purpose.

My thoughts exactly. I just __hate it__. I was super bored, super frustrated, and it was a complete waste of time. I resigned after a year of struggle.

It worked extremely well results-wise for the few months we did it. I went home at the end of the day mentally exhausted, though. You are essentially having a conversation for 9 hours straight, 5 days per week.

I could have done 10x work working alone. I speak from experience. In my current company we use Kanban, and I am super productive. We only do things which are useful for us.

I dunno. Sometimes it's easier to simply stare at a problem & noodle your way through it. That's hard to do when forced to jibber jabber. Is the ol' stare & noodle a pair-friendly activity?

I haven't done pairing myself, but I suspect it's highly variable based on the two specific individuals. Certainly I've noted smart and capable people I work with well, and some that I don't. Not every smart/capable pair is going to mesh. Just because I respect you doesn't mean I can work well with you, especially in such an intimate set up.

Fair enough. I definitely enjoy pairing with some people & not others.

It works better though, if you start from zero and hire people that drank the Koolaid.

It's hard to shoehorn it into an existing team where some portion of the team doesn't believe the premise. For example, some people (introverts, Asperger's spectrum, etc) will just never be comfortable with pairing.

Pivotal doesn't have this problem because developers that don't believe wouldn't ever apply for a job there.

But, that doesn't help Pivotal in their consulting practice. Very few of their clients would have the same advantage.

No it __is not working fantastically well__. I speak from experience. There are also numerous studies (I can link to them) which detail why pair programming wastes time if not used for the right problem (mentoring or super-difficult task).

Seems fair to say in some cases it works fantastically well, in others not at all?

Yes. Pair programming works well if someone is being mentored or you are facing a very hard problem. In other cases it is a waste of time. You can read a lot of studies about this topic.

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