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Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

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Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#21

Post by ergothus »

I don't think I've been in a truly Agile shop, though a few times we had truly Agile periods on a given project.

That said, some worked. If they: * considered every task to be a mix of features, deadlines, and resources, and realized that if you fall behind, even a little, you have to adjust at least one of those three * iteratively completed tasks and reviewed any adjustments to the overall project * Had dev management be two way communication

Then things were pretty smooth, even if they weren't Agile.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#22

Post by dithering »

ravenstine wrote: post #6
abakker wrote: post #4

This feels like "I can't define agile, but I know it when I see it"...or just a wonderful example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Agile is basically implemented to create an iterative feedback loop in the development process, but it seems totally rational that what works for startups won't work for very large distributed companies, and what works for an app developer won't work for an automotive supplier. Standups c…

> This feels like "I can't define agile, but I know it when I see it"...or just a wonderful example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Maybe so, but you are also describing Agile as if it can be anything a company wants it to be, which effectively makes Agile meaningless. I've worked with clients that have a waterfall-like development process, "standups" that are both status-reporting to management and on the spot plan…

IMO it depends how they got there.

For me the "minimal set" of rules that can still be called Agile is a mechanism for measurement, and a retrospective. You use the retrospective to perturb the process, and you use the measurement to decide whether that perturbation was a success or a failure.

That's it - old school cybernetics. If you used feedback loops to iterate towards a successful process, you're doing Agile. If there are parts of the process that are off-limits to you (eg management insists on doorstepping your standups) then you're not doing Agile.

Of course, we "prime the pump" somewhat by throwing in a bunch of extra rules at the beginning that we know from experience are likely to work, but I think that Agile, done right, has a lot in common with Nomic.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#23

Post by legitster »

I work at a large national software company who shall remain nameless. At some point, they determined that "we are now Agile" and put all work in a tracking software, and everything must now be assigned to sprints.

But if you dig any amount of depth down it becomes ridiculous. An example I found, the helpdesk literally has one project every sprint ("Ticket resolution: February Sprint 1", "Ticket resolution: February Sprint 2", etc.)

Or tasks that used to take 2 or 3 days now gets split across 2 or 3 sprints, because guy 1 can't allocate it to guy 2 until he finishes it. And it just sits around until the next sprint.

Even creative departments are supposed to snap-to. The idea is a recording a video should be a dozen or so tickets in Jira (edits and revisions happen as bugs). These teams are smart and overworked enough to completely ignore the directive.

And the amount of PMs has increased by an order of magnitude, because taking things in and out of the tracker has become its own workload because managers want to see more and more detailed 'analytics', so work get broken down into finer and finer pieces.

I describe the situation as if someone tried to make their truck lighter and faster by bolting a Lotus onto it.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#24

Post by kleiba »

Does any one have good (as in: known to actually have had a positive effect in the past) insights on how to convince your manager(s) that (at least their version of) "agile" is not helping the company?

My wife works in a company where the managements seems to be quite "proud" to apply "agile methods" but in my wife's opinion, it's more BS bingo than producing a measurable boost in productivity, quality, or any other desirable metric. It is her impression that they are forced to adhere to certain routines even when the benefit is questionable. For instance, every morning at 9pm the whole department has a "daily scrum meeting", but most of the time there's nothing important to report from the day before for a lot of people, so it tends to lead to either embarrassment, pressure, or to people making crap up just so they have something to say. Needless to say that this doesn't lead to "team building".

That's just one example.

So, either the specific way "agile" is executed in my wife's company is just stupid, or the whole methodology is perhaps not applicable to their setup -- or something else. But it seems that the current practice is just a gigantic waste of time, yet the management is so proud of their "agile" way.

How could this situation be improved? Any tips?

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#25

Post by cwyers »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #20
cwyers wrote: post #15

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of agile. Agile isn't Scrum, agile isn't Kanban, Agile isn't even really the manifesto. Agile is, like lean manufacturing (one of its inspirations), based around one really simple concept: the workers know the most about what they are doing and should be leading the charge on what they are doing. If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -…

> If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -- if your story points are used to tell management how much work is getting done, if management is using the daily standup to make sure people are on-task instead of being about commitments. If agile is just another way for management to exert control over software development, rather than being about ceding control to software developers, i…

Bad management is Nosferatu: it's a blood-sucker by design. If you take Dracula out of the Carpathian Mountains and move him to Carfax Abbey, Dracula is not going to stop being a blood-sucker, he's just going to start drinking Lucy and Mina's blood.

Agile is, to my mind, more likely to get you to the right place than something like waterfall. But all the methodology in the world won't save you if management is bad. Putting the blame in the right place is a good place to start, though. If you're living through a bad agile process, saying "I hate bad management" puts the blame in a more correct place than "I hate agile."

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#26

Post by cwyers »

cwyers wrote: post #17
ben7799 wrote: post #9

I'm ready for what comes next after Agile. I've been through about 5 Agile shops now. I would say one of the 5 ran Agile well, the rest were a mess that just makes it frustrating for everyone. What we mostly have now is watered down agile.. the worst bits of agile like never actually "designing" anything, but we don't really have any of the good bits of the older management processes left over. I don't really want fu…

Scrum != agile. You don't need sprints to be agile. If sprints aren't working for you and your team, then stop doing sprints. If your team can't decide to stop doing sprints, then you're not leading your own agile process and you're not really doing agile.

Let me clarify that -- there are people who are using Scrum to do agile. Scrum is not _against_ agile. But if you are doing two-week sprints because management is chasing the latest fad, without empowering the team, you're not agile, you're just in a Scrum cargo cult.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#27

Post by soperj »

kleiba wrote: post #24

Does any one have good (as in: known to actually have had a positive effect in the past) insights on how to convince your manager(s) that (at least their version of) "agile" is not helping the company? My wife works in a company where the managements seems to be quite "proud" to apply "agile methods" but in my wife's opinion, it's more BS bingo than producing a measurable boost in productivity, quality, or any other…

From what I've seen is that Agile doesn't ever end up working when it's driven from Management. They only care because it's supposed to be more productive, but they don't want to actually adopt any of the measures that make it more productive.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#28

Post by cryptonector »

walshemj wrote: post #5
linuxftw wrote: post #3

> Middle managers can also miss the importance of co-locating teams by bringing together designers, engineers, product managers and content specialists in the same physical space. The most highly functioning agile teams aren’t just at the same location or on the same floor: they share the same table. I can't refute this strongly enough. Managers should do their jobs and manage. Doesn't matter where team members are l…

Actually no it doesn't referring to "agile nonsense" is a real red flag. Real Agile RAD /DSDM really does work best with collocated teams and experienced developers not lowest bid outsourced talent. I have worked on both RAD and OSI 9000 (BS5750) waterfall projects so I have experience in both types of development. Oh my Second RAD project was featured at the IEEE and when I was younger I worked with the BSI in the e…

GP said nothing about "lowest bid outsourced talent". "remote work" != "lowest bid outsourced talent".

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#29

Post by dragonwriter »

cwyers wrote: post #15

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of agile. Agile isn't Scrum, agile isn't Kanban, Agile isn't even really the manifesto. Agile is, like lean manufacturing (one of its inspirations), based around one really simple concept: the workers know the most about what they are doing and should be leading the charge on what they are doing. If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -…

> Agile is, like lean manufacturing (one of its inspirations), based around one really simple concept: the workers know the most about what they are doing and should be leading the charge on what they are doing.

The difference between the Agile literature and the Lean literature (including Lean Software Development, which has its own body of literature separate from Agile) is that almost nothing labeled “Agile” actually addresses that central value (except the Manifesto, which does so at a conceptual but not actionable level). It all just skips to concrete decontextualized practices of exactly the sort that the Manifesto’s “people and interactions over processes and tools” is a reaction against, while the Lean body of work actually addresses (without narrow prescriptivism) higher level meta-processes and practices which empower workers to drive the process of evaluatibg and adapt the low-level work processes to acheive business value.

Agile is basically the values of Lean accidentally recast in less-concrete way which empowers the kind of management consultant snake-oil solution vendors that it was a reaction against. While there are some decent ideas about low-level practices that are worth considering once you have the appropriate Lean organizational culture in place under the Agile banner, the body of work under that banner is mostly a distraction from the goals it notionally serves; better to ignore it all and focus on Lean than to make it front and center.

Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)

#30

Post by wool_gather »

cwyers wrote: post #15

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of agile. Agile isn't Scrum, agile isn't Kanban, Agile isn't even really the manifesto. Agile is, like lean manufacturing (one of its inspirations), based around one really simple concept: the workers know the most about what they are doing and should be leading the charge on what they are doing. If your agile ceremonies end up being all about giving management control -…

Similar musings under the "Dark Scrum" heading by Ron Jeffries:

> Every day, the team is supposed to get together and organize the day’s work. [... The ScrumMaster ...] knows his job. His job is to stay on top of what everyone is doing, make sure they’re doing the right things, and redirect them if they’re not. How convenient that there’s a mandatory meeting where he can do that, every single day!

> In practice the Dark Sprint Review begins by someone reminding everyone what the team “promised” to do. (That is, what was demanded right before the team said “We’ll try”. That’s a promise, isn’t it?) Then we look at the pitiful failure the team brings us.

https://ronjeffries.com/articles/016-09ff/defense/

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