Continuing our journey in the “Agile is dead” space, I thought Halloween was the perfect date to explore the ways in which Agile is actually not just dead, but undead in many companies. If you read my earlier entry, you might have come across the thought that this was where we were heading towards. Let’s investigate further.
Other entries in this series:
For quite some time companies have jumped on the bandwagon of “agile” – without trying to understand the paradigm shift associated with it, asking for measurements, metrics, asking for higher velocity, roadmaps for the next ten years, and whatever horror stories you may have come across.
At its core, Agile development methods are a bet to deliver the biggest value given the time that we have. Agile is a bet to deliver the most valuable product that we can in the available time.
Of course, at its core, there is a trade-off decision. We could deliver more gold-plated features if we had more time. But current market-pressure, opportunities against our competitors, and legal deadlines don’t always allow us to take the time to gold-plate everything.
But then again, people in companies from more traditional processes are used to getting more reliable data on where things are. If you dig deeper, though, you will find out that it’s an illusion of safety they are getting. More often than not, deadlines pass by, features are scrapped or delivered in lower quality, since more traditional processes do not allow to put counter-measures on the various trade-off decisions in developing a product. “Follow the plan”, “The deadline and scope is fixed” are phrases you may have come across.
Given that situation, whenever Agile methodologies tried to cross the chasm to the Early and Late Majority, the core of the message got washed out. Different approaches started to maintain the illusion of safety and control to upper management. Tool vendors jumped on that waggon, and incorporated metrics for all those false idols that are dominant in the corporations out there.
And don’t get me started on the things people started to do when they tried to pick the easy parts of a certain scaling framework – with neglecting the harder ones (or the framework even confusing well-established terms and tools, contributing to the whole situation we find ourselves in now).
“I focus on my team, since I don’t know how to change the whole organization” is the most scariest phrase I have heard over the years from a Scrum Master. Basically, it’s part of your job as a Scrum Master to develop the organization to help your team bring better outcomes for your customers and the company your team works in. If you fail to do that by “just focussing on your team” with facilitation of various meetings, you are missing the point.
True, there is a time for good facilitation. Over time, though, your team should now on its own how to facilitate themselves and solve their own problems. In most companies that I have seen, highly-educated people work on Scrum Teams, and those adults are capable to solve problems, even complex social ones. Let them shine on that instead of turning them into zombies.
It does not surprise me at all, that so many companies stop to see value in their Scrum Masters and Coaches, if the only thing they do is to turn their developers into zombies. Unfortunately though that means that the companies that would benefit from good coaches are turning their heads from them. A vicious cycle.
Is all hope lost? Let’s see in the next entry.
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