2014 articles that aged badly

Nancy Hughes

In fashion-driven industries, such as software development, some topics change from year to year, and few stay relevant for longer. Unfortunately, we can’t tell what we’ll find interesting in ten years, but at least we can find ten year-old articles that aged badly.

Scrum

Architect - the missing Scrum role (2014) addressed the confusion caused by Scrum not describing all of software development. Back then, development teams still got value from development process guidance. Product owner unavailable (2020), also addressed a Scrum implementation challenge. Many organisations failed to properly assign the product owner role, setting Scrum teams up for failure.

Today, we don’t talk about Scrum in the same way, if at all. While agile software development methodology work continues, teams no longer all choose Scrum by default.

Comeback chances: low. Software industry methods have become more diverse, and we can no more imagine returning to Scrum-by-default, than we could have imagined returning to waterfall-by-default in Scrum’s heyday.

Estimates

Software estimation checklist (2014) offered help with avoiding unnecessarily bad development effort estimates. Like many hard things, you get better at estimates with experience.

Ten years ago, we spent time understanding development effort, while ignoring business value, and what business outcomes that development might achieve. Many teams have now found better uses for their time than estimation, instead adopting newer techniques such as story-splitting and objectives and key results.

Comeback chances: medium. Now that the pendulum has swung the other way, focusing product teams on value instead of effort, perhaps it will return to a more central balance between the two.

Offices

Post-it Super Sticky - notes that don’t fall off (2014) explored a different and neglected kind of technique, focused on in-person group collaboration. Despite the rise of agile coaching and facilitated workshops, too many people still struggled to use sticky notes effectively.

Today many teams avoid a whiteboard’s requirement for a co-located team, and instead work remote and use online whiteboard tools. They have more to gain from improving their online collaboration skills, than paper skills.

Comeback chances: medium. While many product teams will never return to working in offices by default, they’ll occasionally meet in person, and discover that failing to use a physical whiteboard makes for a fun team event.

Social media

What to write on Twitter (2015) reacted to disingenuous journalistic commentary on social networks’ value. Instead, social media enabled new kinds of personal publishing.

Today, social media have more sinister problems than people not knowing what to use them for. Meanwhile, it no longer feels appropriate to tell people how to use online tools.

Comeback chances: high. In many respects, social media that tolerates any behaviour hasn’t turned out well. This creates opportunities for alternatives where no-one tells you how to use them, and how not to, or face de-platforming and other consequences.

Server-side rendering

Scaling down Play and Scala web applications (2014) argues that developers should wield their skills to simplify the software they write. If you have them, powerful tools can also solve smaller problems.

Unfortunately, few professional developers aim to write simpler code or build simpler applications.

Comeback chances: high. Simplifying web application architecture won’t become fashionable any time soon, but ten years of front-end framework excess make a backlash inevitable. Perhaps server-side rendering will become the new retro fashion.