Agile: “The right way” Religion
A guide through this new religion that has spread all the software development companies around the world.
With this “Agile heresy” I am exposing myself to suffer public punishment from companies and friends, but someone had to leave it in writing: It is not your fault, is the Agile Religion rise.
Genesis
In the beginning there was only darkness (and Linux, Windows, MacOs, websites, smartphones, Office, Wikipedia, mp3, streaming…)
But then 17 wise men went to the mountains of Utah and they reveal the tables of Agile manifesto so developers could finally start doing software “The Right way”
The 12 ( c̶o̶m̶m̶a̶n̶d̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶) principles was written and now the herd shall spread
Scrum is human, Agile is divine
You shall not blame Agile for failing, Agile is the path for success, a mindset, the nirvana, Scrum, in the other hand, is a way of implementing it and is open to human failure.
Agile is the Christ message, Scrum is the church
“While there is much anecdotal evidence that adopting agile practices and values improves the agility of software professionals, teams and organizations, some empirical studies have disputed that evidence”
Hey Wikipedia, who needs empirical evidences when we are in the right religion?
Not enough virgins sacrificed
Before even blaming SCRUM for your failing project, ask yourself
- Are you honoring the rituals? the right way? (stand ups, grooming, retros, reviews, demos, planning, refining, catch ups, one on ones, team syncs…) if you do, are you having still time to deliver something?
- Are the right e̶c̶c̶l̶e̶s̶i̶a̶s̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶s Scrum Managers involved? (Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach)
- Are tools been used correctly (prayers) ?(workflows, tickets, descriptions, estimations, time used, ticket scope, ticket splitting, definition of ready, definition of done, comments, naming the right people, documentation, 6 slack channels)
If you do and you are still failing, you should do it more.
Your feelings comes from Sin
You could identify you are a sinner when
- You don’t enjoy stand ups. are you drifting away every morning while other are talking about what they did and what they will do? You are not a team player
- Poker estimations. not enjoying the debates about complexity vs time? complexity by democracy is not good enough for you?
- Are you this kind of coder that is frustrated because you only touch the keyboard to do Jira/Slack/Confluence stuff? Man, coding is secondary, you should accept Agile in your soul.
- What about retros? if you don’t enjoy (slaughter) constructive criticisms to grow and improve the team work you are almost possessed.
- You can clean your self in the One on One confessions, so you can learn how to repress your feelings, and smile while accepting the Agile truth revealed.
Nobody expects the Scrum inquisition
The Scrum envoys can help your company to improve the software delivery even when your company has no developer left, when cuts need to be done, who are going to be the guys on the meetings to assess the beheading?
Of course this has nothing to do with Negative selection
If he is a good coder but he doesn’t like agile, then he is not a good team worker, we should train him in Agile or…
Eternal and Omnipresent
There is a whole industry for doing Agile (The Right Way), you have courses, certifications, camps, intensive trainings, because your company can’t survive without it, there was only darkness, remember?
Scrum is only one way to organize workers, there is many other we never heard about and you don’t need to know when you are in the right right religion.
Before going to the stake I should confess that I am closer to this other manifesto rather than Agile’s.