About CliffCliff is an Agile Consultant and self proclaimed “computer botherer.”Links:
Agile Manifesto: https://agilemanifesto.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/moonpolysoft

TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at the Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part my Cribl Logstream. Cirbl Logstream is an observability pipeline that lets you collect, reduce, transform, and route machine data from anywhere, to anywhere. Simple right? As a nice bonus it not only helps you improve visibility into what the hell is going on, but also helps you save money almost by accident. Kind of like not putting a whole bunch of vowels and other letters that would be easier to spell in a company name. To learn more visit: cribl.ioCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I’m Corey Quinn. My guest today has done an awful lot of things over the course of his career: startup engineering; software work; founded two startups; has been an engineering manager a bunch of places; has been the CTO at UpGuard, for example; and consulted at one point on HBO’s Silicon Valley. Also of note, he is now these days, a renowned Agile consultant. Cliff Moon, welcome to the show.Cliff: [laugh]. Hi, Corey. Thanks for having me.Corey: So, you and I have had energetic conversations about Agile, and based upon that context calling you an Agile consultant for enterprises is basically a deadly insult at this point. Let’s get some context on that. For those who have not heard of the term because they live wonderful, blessed lives. What is Agile? A lot of people talk about it, but always the presupposition that people listening know what it is.Cliff: Yeah, that’s a great place to start. So, let’s go back into, sort of, prehistory. What we call Agile today is, I guess, several generations removed from the original thoughts of Agile. So, in case folks aren’t aware, to kind of lay the background, there was a group of software developers, I think it might have been in 2000, might even have been earlier than that, who came up with what they call the Agile Manifesto. And I’m not going to go through a point by point, one, because I don’t remember it; two, it’s not germane. But—Corey: But it’s called a manifesto. I mean, if you take a look at things that have been written historically that are called manifestos, very few of them are good. Like, generally ‘manifesto’ sounds like something you wind up writing in a cabin somewhere, right before you wind up doing some sort of horrible crime that winds up living in infamy for 30 years.Cliff: Yeah, yeah. Manifestos, they get a bad rap for good reason. Anyway, let’s not go down that [laugh] that rabbit hole. But yeah, so Agile Manifesto, right. Basically, it was this group of people, they said, “Hey, we don’t think we’re developing software the right way. This is unnecessarily painful. We’re doing things in kind of a silly fashion. Let’s refocus it around the customer. Let’s do this,” yadda, yadda, yadda.And again, like you’re saying, it’s a manifesto; it’s not very prescriptive about what to do to solve the problem, it really just points out problems and then gives a bunch of vague statements about, “Here’s the things we should value,” or whatever. And so again, like we’re saying, as a manifesto it kind of mutates from there, and then everyone agrees; they say, “Yep, this is the wrong way. Let’s try a better way.” And down through the line, what ended up happening was a lot of people figured out that they can make money doing this, and make money being an Agile consultant, or an Agilist, if you’re, [laugh] if you like that title. So, it’s people who come in, and I guess, try to teach you how to do Agile t