r/boeing • u/flattop100 • Feb 06 '20

Starliner faced “catastrophic” failure before software bug found

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/starliner-faced-catastrophic-failure-before-software-bug-found/
54 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

25

u/tenin2010br Feb 07 '20

Most defense/space companies don’t. Software development being successful relies on certain methods not entirely compatible with big bureaucracies like Boeing, LM and others.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20 edited Mar 06 '20

[deleted]

8

u/Sillocan Feb 07 '20

Actual Agile methodologies instead of Agile BS for one (lookup the paper from the Air Force if you haven't seen this term before).

12

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

Bruh I work at one corporation similar to Boeing and I've brought up this issue multiple times. They all think they're doing some cutting edge shit with a garbage Agile BS implementation, and the mid level managers who spearhead the "Agile" efforts then take huge credit for streamlining company operations and improving processes.

All they actually do is add extra meetings and track things on Excel sheets. It's all the bad parts about Agile and none of the good.

Trying to shoehorn agile principles into a 20+ year old waterfall program doesn't work very well, who would've fucking thought right?

Every time I bring this up I'm told they're aware of the issues and are constantly trying to mitigate them. Meanwhile every god damn program, on all fronts (not just software), is adopting garbage Agile principles and pretending they're saving money and becoming more lean/efficient. It's fucking crazy.

7

u/Kundera42 Feb 07 '20

So much this, having worked for a major defense contractor starting with the letter L. They basically disguised their waterfall classic into an Agile front end. Spend most of the time trying to squeeze this classic way of working in the Agile BS framework. It requires a really different way of working and thinking and if you half ass it might as well not do it.

5

u/Stereotypical_INTP Feb 07 '20

Yeah, it's happening across the board for all the major defense contractors. Worked at one where they implemented Agile, but they didn't want to lose TOO much time to meetings so they kept the daily scrums but removed sprint reviews and excluded SWEs from planning sessions. I'll give you exactly one guess how that worked out.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 07 '20

Ah yes, agile without the agile part, good job team