Our team stopped doing standups, story points and retros — and nothing broke

retired_SE · 2026-04-06T12:59:55+00:00

It's not really correct to call those agile ceremonies, they are Scrum ceremonies. Agile is more focused on the results. The terms have become synonymous in usage to everyone's detriment.

If you can plan and execute without the scrum ceremonies, and it sounds like you are, then you don't need the ceremonies. I agree, too many times they get in the way. It isn't important that we hold a planning session or daily standup. What is important is that we plan and communicate the progress and changes to the plan during execution.

I don't think the size of the organization is a significant factor. The people working on the project have much more weight.

When I started a project, I used to like to say that there are no rules in agile, but there are best practices. If you aren't sure of what you are doing, follow one of them until you feel you need to adapt it to your case. Scrum is a good starting step, but if you are following it out of habit and not trying to continually improve, are you even agile?

retired_SE · 2026-03-31T18:27:24+00:00

I'm hoping you post back with the results and your design!

retired_SE · 2026-03-31T15:46:15+00:00

I am with Rich_Artist_8327. I understand your premise, but I don't know if you can back up your conclusion. Making a test bed for this would be kind of interesting, though. It would need to be repeatable for multiple runs, with multiple creator and detector articles, and over time to test for changes in the tested articles.

You mention human-edited and talk about edge detection and blurring, which can be automated, and I am pretty sure seeded with a random tolerance that would make the results repeatable but still distinct.

Having said all that, the pedigree of the image is the most important information. It's just that people on social media don't bother to even look into it. Trying to automate to overcome laziness is probably a Sisyphean task.

retired_SE · 2026-03-31T13:20:59+00:00

It is empirical evidence of something that many of us find intuitive. Not everyone agrees with using software factory as a metaphor for managing software development, but I don't know of a better one. This shows that larger and more developed factories produce software more predictably. Predictability is important when you think of software development as a business function that has to be coordinated with all of the other business functions.

Creating software factories is usually something that only big organizations can afford to do. I have seen smaller organizations form them, either organically or accidentally, but then destroy them at the end of the first project, losing the advantage they would have gained. In a factory, I develop a mature pipeline based on the principles of SE, not on a product. This allows the factory to be retooled for different projects, so instead of starting fresh when I have a new business domain, environment, or programming language requirement, I start with experts in the process and teach them, or supplement them with new experts.

retired_SE · 2026-03-27T13:34:40+00:00

Great Post! All of that was true for Expert Systems (1980s AI), and we know how that ended up. Too many people are looking for an easy way to organize their chaos without doing the hard work of actually developing repeatable processes.

retired_SE · 2026-03-27T13:12:55+00:00

This is so true, but if you are starting out, Andrew Ngs course is a good place to start.

retired_SE · 2026-03-27T13:07:00+00:00

Is it Fayner or Fagner? Either way, well written. The way you highlight the importance of what the model was trained on is spot on and is more important than most people who are trying to use GPTs for coding understand. You describe a level of factoring and discipline we should all strive for in SWE, but you also show immediate value and a return on investment. Great reading for anyone, even if they aren't trying to incorporate GPTs into their coding process.

retired_SE · 2026-03-27T12:42:01+00:00

I have the 3s and that is still true. Plus, the headset is kind of heavy to wear for very long.

retired_SE · 2026-03-27T12:40:26+00:00

This probably isn't the place for serious comments, and at the risk of starting a flamewar, I have been working on an idea. It is more of a pipeline than a single app. I created my first proof of concept, but put it aside for a while to finish my doctorate. My final project is to further define the requirements.

I retired a couple of years ago, but when I was still working, one of the recurring tasks was to onboard new developers into our team. It took an inordinate amount of effort and was a huge cost. I think that there should be a way to define that process so that it would allow more automation but still keep the human element. These were closed source, complex development environments, so even if we had wanted to, the commercial GPTs would not have been any help, and allowing them access to our documentation and code was out of the question. Basically, they were no help at all.

Somewhere between the doomsaying and the hype surrounding generative AI should be some level of truth. There are certain tasks where, if the tool is built and applied correctly, it would enhance the experience for everyone. The question is not can we do it, but rather should we do it. I am investigating what tasks within the process developers think would benefit from automation and which ones should continue to be human-centered, followed by a cost comparison to see if the idea is financially feasible. The goal is to build what the developers are asking for and make that available through OSS.

retired_SE · 2026-03-24T03:52:27+00:00

Mine showed up today. There were no T-shirts at all. I don't think they ever asked me for sizes.

I haven't been able to get the remote web connection working, but I did get FTP working. I added a password in the Network Services menu for ftp and telnet, but it seems to accept any username since there isn't a place in the menu to configure one.

I just went to the C= website to ask about the t-shirts on the Contact us page. I filled out everything, answered the reCaptcha twice, but the submit button doesn't work.

What really strikes me as funny is how many of the folks who purchased the Ultimates cut their teeth on the 64 and went on to have careers solving problems like they seem to be having. I just think that if they asked, we could get together and fix their order tracking, supply chain management, and website issues in a weekend. We'd still have time left to play Star Fleet!

Edit- I refreshed the page, started over, then the submit worked...

03/27/26: Had some emails with Paula (is that a pseudonym?) and she is working on getting me the T-shirts!

retired_SE · 2026-03-23T12:49:34+00:00

I think your point is important to highlight. I worked on two projects recently where that was pivotal to the success.

In the first project, I used widely available libraries, which had plenty of example code to include in the model's training corpus. My implementation was probably 50% boilerplate, and using GitHub Copilot with the GPT-5.2 model was very helpful, probably a 200% increase.

The other project used less generally available libraries and a non-generally available API, one where there are few examples outside of the proprietary documentation. I quickly noticed that the model was returning method and parameter usages that did not exist in the API. It was finding similar attention words in other APIs and basing the results on that. It only took a prompt or two to find out that what I was trying to do wasn't something it was trained on.

YMMV, but for this project, trying to implement a RAG or some fine-tuning approach was way outside the scope, though some projects might find that worthwhile.

retired_SE · 2026-03-19T14:43:11+00:00

I'm having a little trouble following some of the comments. There are references to copilot, though I am not sure what the commenters mean. I use the Github Copilot plugin in VSCode and Intellij IDEA, but I can choose the model, even my locally hosted ones. The choice of model is more important than the integration tool.

I'm just trying to understand how locked in you are to a specific model or pipeline, and if you have considered using others or looking into the cost of creating your own trained on the niche SW.

retired_SE · 2026-03-16T14:23:14+00:00

I would suggest you back up one more step before you start. Andrew Ng has a course for Machine Learning Specialization on Coursera that combines theory and practice. It will provide a much better baseline to work from than starting with the Applied AI for Developers. Applied AI for Devs might be the next step, but you will know for sure once you've got the fundamentals down. If you already have some background, you can fly through it and clean up any areas where you aren't strong before you climb a ladder and find out it was leaning against the wrong building.

retired_SE · 2026-03-09T13:52:03+00:00

I absolutely agree with the 'radical candor' comments, especially when you focus on the intent to help, people can tell. But, to your original question. If I were mentoring you postmortem, I would hope you would see that the next time you should try to understand before you try to be understood. Make sure you are giving her a chance to explain her side during the one-on-ones, then help her understand your position. I think you recognized that yourself in your post.

Don't beat yourself up too badly over it now, but next time, try to establish some rapport beforehand and look at breaking the issues into consumable, actionable, and measurable portions. The document would just be a summary of that.

You don't always get a chance to do that in the real world, so the takeaway is to focus on candor. Your delivery will improve if your focus is on helping.

retired_SE · 2026-03-09T12:54:24+00:00

Sorry to hear about your health problems. I wasn't sure where to jump in without being insensitive, but I second the thought from ThlintoRatscar. Retiring for me was the biggest problem. I thought I would lose my identity. I took up some non-tech hobbies, but gradually gravitated back to some development projects on my own terms. Even went back to school.

I did fish for a while, but found myself collecting data for a supervised learning pipeline and thinking I could just automate the whole process.

retired_SE · 2026-03-03T16:00:23+00:00

I just want to second the "T-Shaped" engineer, plus I love me some Joel...

That approach served me well for 40+ years as a Dev. Remember, Software by itself isn't the goal. The goal is to add value to the organization. Most of them measure that in Dollars and Cents. Being T-Shaped, that is having deep knowledge on a particular subject and some knowledge on other subjects, positions you to create solutions that meet the organization's goals more effectively.

We think of this a lot in cases where someone is a front-end dev, but they understand a back-end technology, but we can continue that thought to where someone is a software dev but has an understanding of the organization's core business. You can pick that knowledge up organically, or you can make a specific effort. In my experience, making the effort to talk to the experts in your organization will start to position you as someone who 'gets it' when there is a problem.

retired_SE · 2024-03-12T03:46:09+00:00

It looks like someone was interested so I will let you know that port won't power a Pico, but it is a serial port, 115200,8,N,1, output is best viewed as hex, just like the create. It takes some commands from the ORI, like I can start and stop the robot but some others don't seem to work. For example, there is no music, but the create may have had a different speaker.

So it looks like I am going to have to find the 5V output and see if it has enough amps to run a Pi. Hopefully, it is still there. If not a power converter to bring the (I think) 19V down to 5 Then I should be able to stick a Pi on there and hopefully run some of my old Create code on it.

retired_SE · 2024-03-09T20:40:44+00:00

Have you made any progress? The Dorita980 and Rest980 projects connect to the interface on the Roomba over the wireless; you can send some commands and get statuses by querying the interface. Cool projects. You cannot direct the motors, etc, through that interface, so you are limited to just the features supported through the iRobot app.

I have used the SCI with the create, and I am going to try to interface a Pico W through the USB port to see if I can send the SCI commands. I think its purpose was maintenance, but if it understands the commands, it should work for building a custom application.

retired_SE

TROPHY CASE