TODO next week: Go collect all of the blog post cycles of "Agile Sucks" -> "No, agile in theory is fine, it's just marketing and implementation that sucks."
It's a full-fledged meme at this point. And I think if you distilled all of these posts down to their essence, you'd have a really solid critique and we could build some lessons learned, and the next time someone gets burned by a bad implementation of s/Agile|XP|Scrum/ maybe the narrative will change a bit from "Agile sucks" to something more productive, something closer to "there's that Agile execution thing again, and here's what I did about it."
Everything OP says is true, Agile is misapplied, overmarketed and badly executed, and much suffering in the name of "Agile" has happened.
But we need to change the story now. This same cycle of "sucks" -> "yeah but" is generating more heat than light. Time to reset and redirect our expectations to something productive.
"In time there will be a new movement which paints Agile as broken, inefficient and bad and we’ll get a new brand. That’s the kind of iterative development I’m looking forward to; a new target for our collective disdain ;)"
Here we've hit on something. On common refrain in anti-Agile screeds is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." And it's true, but instead of cynically setting us up for some other jaded iteration of Good Process Idea -> Marketing Scam/Bad Implementation -> Backlash, let's distill the lessons learned into something a little more focused and circumspect.
Let's not cycle through this again, please. Let's set Agile in its proper place, good stuff, bad stuff, the whole thing. And let's tell the right story that might help us stop looking to things like Agile as the One Best Way to do software and see it as the limited tool it is, dependent on many other concerns, such as quality of developer, product focus, political environment, etc. Agile was a great insight in its time, and I think the time is come for a large-scale retrospective by the community to state the lessons learned.
One iteration I would really like to see end is "Agile Sucks" -> "But Not Really". Time to move on to the next level, one that acknowledges Agile's failings but doesn't involve a wholesale scrapping of Agile's important insights.
TODO next week: Go collect all of the blog post cycles of "Agile Sucks" -> "No, agile in theory is fine, it's just marketing and implementation that sucks."
It's a full-fledged meme at this point. And I think if you distilled all of these posts down to their essence, you'd have a really solid critique and we could build some lessons learned, and the next time someone gets burned by a bad implementation of s/Agile|XP|Scrum/ maybe the narrative will change a bit from "Agile sucks" to something more productive, something closer to "there's that Agile execution thing again, and here's what I did about it."
Everything OP says is true, Agile is misapplied, overmarketed and badly executed, and much suffering in the name of "Agile" has happened.
But we need to change the story now. This same cycle of "sucks" -> "yeah but" is generating more heat than light. Time to reset and redirect our expectations to something productive.
"In time there will be a new movement which paints Agile as broken, inefficient and bad and we’ll get a new brand. That’s the kind of iterative development I’m looking forward to; a new target for our collective disdain ;)"
Here we've hit on something. On common refrain in anti-Agile screeds is "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." And it's true, but instead of cynically setting us up for some other jaded iteration of Good Process Idea -> Marketing Scam/Bad Implementation -> Backlash, let's distill the lessons learned into something a little more focused and circumspect.
Let's not cycle through this again, please. Let's set Agile in its proper place, good stuff, bad stuff, the whole thing. And let's tell the right story that might help us stop looking to things like Agile as the One Best Way to do software and see it as the limited tool it is, dependent on many other concerns, such as quality of developer, product focus, political environment, etc. Agile was a great insight in its time, and I think the time is come for a large-scale retrospective by the community to state the lessons learned.
One iteration I would really like to see end is "Agile Sucks" -> "But Not Really". Time to move on to the next level, one that acknowledges Agile's failings but doesn't involve a wholesale scrapping of Agile's important insights.