Where in this article is there any examples of how most people aren't following agile methods? Pointless
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)
#62Where in this article is their any examples of how teams are not adhering to agile methods? Pointless
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#63Dave Thomas, one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto [1] wrote an article called "Time to Kill Agile" [2] a few years ago (which he subsequently re-titled "Agile is Dead"). He has some good insight on how Agile (the methodology) got to be something very different from what they intended. Originally they were trying to break away from a rigid methodology, not introduce a whole new one. Unfortunately, if you…
Seems to me they needed someone to be in charge who knew how to get these things done and give him a title like "manager"or something
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#64Does 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…
I know what you describe is common, but the purpose of the daily really isn’t to boast about your heroic achievements of yesterday, or give a status report to management. That part should be cut out entirely much of the time. A better idea is to plan the current day, identify where someone could use help, where two people need to coordinate more closely or on what issues further discussion is needed and with whom. If…
That's exactly what it's for.
To put a finer point on it, a daily stand-up meeting should be no more than 15 minutes long, and about three specific things. Each person should talk about exactly these three things (or less, if you can say that one or more of them are not known or relevant yet):
1. What am I working on now
2. What is in the way of getting this thing done
3. What will I work on next
The value of the stand-up comes from the replies you can get from your other team members when they hear your report...
(1) "I know something that you need to know in order to get that done well, or done at all" ...
(2) "I can help with that thing you've identified which is in your way" ...
(3) "Here's something you will need, let's get it ready for you..." or alternatively "That's not going to go well because XYZ isn't ready yet, so maybe plan to work on this other thing instead"
If these things aren't coming out of your daily stand-up meetings on a regular basis, then something about how your group is doing them is wrong.
Talking about what you did yesterday, that is already over and done with (as you say), provides absolutely no value ... unless you know from a previous stand-up that someone was actually waiting for that thing. But if you really knew that already, you should tell that person directly, as there's really no reason to save it for the stand-up unless there just wasn't another opportunity.
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#65I'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…
One thing I learned a long time was this: A "bad" process that has complete buy-in and everyone participates in will always outperform a "good" process that has lip service buy-in and disagreements about who does what.
A team that has skilled individuals exercising judgement and thinking critically about tools (for project management as for everything else) will alway outperform one that’s subordinate to a process.
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I learned a long time was this: A "bad" process that has complete buy-in and everyone participates in will always outperform a "good" process that has lip service buy-in and disagreements about who does what.
It's hard to imagine, that a bad process has complete buy-in.
"That's how we always did it"
Basically the way any larger company works.
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#67Does 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…
Standup is one area where the engineers can affect the culture and the outcome. Expect that at the beginning of a project they can be long but as time goes on they can be quite short. Neither is good or bad, but it's important to keep things succinct. Hopefully rotate who leads the standup - even every day. Probably unpopular opinion but anyone should be able to politely ask that some subjects be handled 'offline'. Well run standups are great tools for productivity. It's not a meeting and it's not conversation. It's discovery. It's having your teammates back.
EDIT: also keep in mind different personalities. Some people just aren't socially comfortable with the format. That's totally fine and hopefully team lead or standup lead will engage them directly after the standup and propagate any relevant info.
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#68I 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 -…
Just today I read a quote on Lean. It was Substance of lean vs. form of lean. And that only a minority is actually having the substance. Guess that applies to Agile as well.
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#69Agile is so vague I don’t even know what it is anymore. Can someone show us how an agile should look when creating a simple to-do list project?
Re: Everyone claims they are following “agile methods” but few do (2018)
#70Dave Thomas, one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto [1] wrote an article called "Time to Kill Agile" [2] a few years ago (which he subsequently re-titled "Agile is Dead"). He has some good insight on how Agile (the methodology) got to be something very different from what they intended. Originally they were trying to break away from a rigid methodology, not introduce a whole new one. Unfortunately, if you…
> I think every team needs to find the approach that works best for them to itemize, prioritize and communicate progress.
Couldn't agree more. A development process is like your CI pipeline, there's no one solution for everyone, but there are common patterns you can choose from and build upon to make something that works for you. And it's something that you will want to assess and refine on a pretty constant basis.
I've worked on everything from high-integrity embedded systems to web applications over the years, and what worked for one would be catastrophic (both metaphorically and literally) for the other.