Anti Agile Movement

A reflection on the anti-agile movement, where it comes from, and where it might be going.

Ned Lowe - CTO of MISSION+, where he helps interesting people build interesting products using offshore development teams.

Transcript

1. A response to the haters NED LOWE 22nd March 2024 Anti-Agile Movement A lot of internet chatter about how agile failed
2. Do they want waterfall? Some do, but it’s rare “Requirements shouldn’t change” 2
3. Side point: Amusing how good many of those complaining have it Many people still work in environments with non-stop project meetings 3
4. Actually people aren’t complaining about agile It’s SCRUM People rarely disagree with the Agile Manifesto 4
5. Scrum is big business 5
6. But do the critics have a point? What are the arguments? 6
7. Too many meetings & ceremonies 15-20% of the sprint 7
8. When do you talk to the users? 8 Stakeholders are often annoyed at the ambiguity
9. Do roadmaps really shift every two weeks? 9
10. Story points are confusing “Thinking story points equal man-days is like measuring the ocean's depth with a ruler—it might give you numbers, but it misses the essence of the sea's vast mysteries.” Plus we all know extra items are added to the sprint 10
11. External dependencies mean tickets roll from sprint to sprint And once that’s normalised, it’s hard to unwind 11
12. A lot of organizations drift into Kanban 12
13. A New Way SURGE SPRINTS Removing some of the Scrum overhead 13
14. Two weeks is too short 37 Signal’s “ShapeUp” methodology uses Six Week Blocks 14 Enough time to achieve something meaningful
15. Stand-Ups Reimagined Async chat update every day Team discussion twice weekly including product owner That’s enough 15
16. Formal User Feedback Session More than just a demo User driven and feedback captured 16
17. Very clear definition of done 17 One week design sprint if not able to articulate
18. Frequent releases Minimise Work in Progress Feature Flags CI/CD 18
19. Engineer-led prioritisation The six week block & definition of done allows for this 19 Product team sets vision!
20. Surge Sprints We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. 20