Overview
Agile is a swear word around here
Have you ever heard words like that before? I have - and not just in once place either! “We don’t follow agile to the letter”, “Agile is too purist”, “That person is a scrum zealot”, “We follow agile but are pragmatic about it”, the list goes on. Something about the words agile, or scrum, or lean, or xp, or kanban, pick your buzzword - something about them inspires a picture of a religious zealot who has their heads in an idealist cloud that can’t be reasoned with. What has caused this?
Like everything, this is likely a result of a number of different reasons - I can think of a few that I have been observed, or unfortunately been a part of. I will mention them here and perhaps write up a bit of a deeper dive on the topics later.
Missing the point of Agile
“Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction” - Kenichi Ohmae
This can be one of the single biggest problems I see over and over again, where people put too much focus on vigorously performing certain actions or using a set of tools, and then missing the point of what those tools trying to help them achieve. Often they end up forcing the agile tools to fit in with their old ways of working and thinking - have you ever seen a backlog of hundreds or thousands of items, all estimated and put in a row so that the next 6 months is planned out?
Yes - agile contains many different tools, techniques and patterns that can be used. Scrum, Kanban, XP, Stand Ups, User Stories, Retrospectives, there are hundreds more - these are tools that can be really helpful and that are tried and true to bring success. But focusing too much on these is like trying to be a boxer by only ever working the heavy bag, the skipping rope, and the speed ball. Yes those things are proven tools to help to become a great boxer - but put too much focus on these things and you will miss the point of boxing and still get your ass whooped in the ring!
The big picture, and I am paraphrasing from some of the creators of agile: to close the gap between the business and the delivery team, and create highly performing teams in a domain that is known for its complexity and fast pace of change.
Almost always, this involves a large mindset and cultural shift. Being aware of that, and working hard on changing, adopting and embracing this, is just as critical as picking up and using the tools and practices, or we risk performing the actions and missing the point completely. We don’t want to be that boxer who becomes the world champion at the skipping rope - but can’t go two rounds in the ring.
Individuals and Interactions - including those outside the team
“Don’t be an asshole” - Mari Takahashi
First on the Agile Manifesto is Individuals and Interactions over Tools and Processes - and we work hard to apply this within our teams. However too often we can make things difficult, or even hostile, for those outside of the team. To use some examples:
- “We only work with user stories”
- “That user story is a solution not a feature”
- “We cannot be disturbed mid sprint”
- “It’ll be done when it’s done and I don’t know when that is”
- “A gant chart! Take that back to the eighties” (God help those poor souls who have presented a gant chart to an agile team)
I’m not saying that these things are bad. We should be creating stories that speak to value and not solutions, we should be minimising disruptions to the team. However I have seen the way that these have been communicated or implemented can really drive a wedge here and cause people to think that agilists are disruptive, difficult to approach, and unreasonable.
We need to remember that we are working with a business that needs to plan and make money, and also with people who have worked in their own ways for 10, 20, 30+ years! We need to keep this in mind and really put value on our interactions with them.
Lack of Transparency
“Scrum keeps everything about a project visible to everyone” - Ken Schwaber
I remember buying a garden sculpture on eBay once. It looked like an amazing stone styled water feature which I was really excited about. When it showed up, it was about 9cm tall and not fit to hold my neighbors dogs toothbrush. Needless to say I was left with a really bad taste in my mouth! In case you were interested, the seller said it was “Art” and “Subjective” which made me feel even more angry.
Anyway - the point is - we must do our best to be upfront with, and to avoid any potential surprises for the stakeholders. We want to do everything we can to advertise, advertise, advertise what the team are doing! The information should be everywhere: This is what we are working on, this is what is coming up, this is our long term roadmap. These are our challenges and risks, this is what we are doing about it, and this is how we are progressing.
I am a fan of having this information short and sharp - it should all be visible on a single powerpoint. We can email that out, have that on our whiteboard, have that on our team home page.
We should never get to a stage where someone can say “I didn’t know you were doing this” or “Why are you doing that” or “Why didn’t you tell me this”?
Summary
I have touched on just a few things here, which are very common patterns I see that can contribute to the misunderstanding and near trash talking of Agile. They are fundamental things really, and there are more experiences of where this is gone badly and where this has gone well, however I am trying to write shorter posts and this one has already gotten quite long - so I will touch on these in future, watch this space :)