
Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few actually do - zwieback
https://work.qz.com/1201384/everyone-claims-they-are-following-agile-methods-but-few-actually-do/
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mindcrime
The big problems I see are this:

1\. Talking about "Agile" like it's a "thing" you can adopt (it's not). Agile
is a _description_ of a _family_ of methodologies. Or, to be more precise,
it's a _set of principles and ideals_ which a large set of methodologies claim
to incorporate and emphasize (and do so to varying degrees). Anyway, you don't
adopt "Agile" you adopt Scrum, or Crystal, or AgileUP, or XP, or SAFE, etc.
And yes, this matters, because people say "Agile says you do X" where this
statement is basically incorrect for almost every value of X. "Agile" is _not_
some heavyweight, prescriptive methodology that dictates a Jira workflow,
blah, etc. It's your shitty implementation of Scrum, SAFE, etc. that dictates
these things. But people get to use the excuse "this is Agile" if you argue
against any part of the current process.

2\. Completely missing sight of how the Agile Manifesto says "favor
individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and implementing some
highly prescriptive, top-down, command-and-control process. And thinking that
"we're Agile" because we have daily scrums, use Jira (or Rally), and work in
"sprints". Basically, people adopt the _ceremony_ and some of the _language_
used by some agile-family methodologies, but completely avoid the _principles
and ideals_ of Agile (and articulated in the Agile Manifesto).

3\. Impedance mismatch between the way developers expect to work in an "Agile"
environment, and what management wants. Basically, somebody in management read
an HBR article or something that said "Agile lets you move faster" and
misinterpreted that as "If we implement Agile, my developers will crank out
more code faster, and I don't have to change anything else about how this
company works".

~~~
zwieback
Yes, yes and yes!

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zwieback
At my workplace we're semi-agile but it's been mostly in response to middle
and upper managers, who want to claim to be agile. Our practices haven't
changed all that much, to be honest. Initially we were aiming for full-blown
agile but it felt like too much of a straight jacket and there was a lot of
resentment against being micromanaged.

~~~
mindcrime
_Initially we were aiming for full-blown agile but it felt like too much of a
straight jacket and there was a lot of resentment against being micromanaged._

There is no such thing as "agile". Were they talking about Scrum, SAFE, XP,
Crystal, AgileUP or what? And in either case, if what was being pitched
involved a lot of micromanagement and felt like a "straight jacket" then you
can pretty much say that, by definition, it was not a valid implementation of
the principles of the Agile Manifesto. Unless your comparing to a complete
"cowboy coding" environment with no process at all, in which case even the
most lightweight process might feel constraining...

~~~
zwieback
In our case Scrum was the favored methodology. I'm not arguing against Agile
or even Scrum, by the way. I've been following and dreaming about working in a
team like they described on the Extreme Programming pages on c2.com years
before Agile was a twinkle in our managers' eyes.

However, in our case implementing something closer to the pure ideal of the
Agile Manifesto proved too challenging:

\- In internal SW projects it's difficult to find a customer that's willing to
put in the time required to drive the development.

\- Everyone has multiple jobs, some include ME and EE that are hard to agilify

\- Managers don't really want to turn over scheduling authority to the team

\- Exploratory and learning takes a backseat to knocking items off the backlog

~~~
mindcrime
_Everyone has multiple jobs, some include ME and EE that are hard to agilify_

 _\- Managers don 't really want to turn over scheduling authority to the
team_

 _\- Exploratory and learning takes a backseat to knocking items off the
backlog_

Yeah, that's usually what happens. It's a shame too. :-(

