Agile's early evangelists wouldn't mind watching Agile die
My first team, some 14 years ago, had the best experience with Agile.  What made this work<p>&gt; During planning, everyone understood that the estimates were _estimates_.  Tasks could take longer or shorter, that was OK and even expected.  The goal was to improve velocity, not to accomplish every story, every time.<p>&gt; Engineers felt comfortable taking stories in areas they knew nothing about. A stated goal was that every engineer understand every piece of the project.<p>&gt; Standups were team only. Engineers felt comfortable saying they got stuck or needed help or got lost in a rathole and didn&#x27;t make the progress they hoped.<p>&gt; Demos were important so that the team and the clients could understand what had changed and what new features were available.<p>But it quickly got lost - managers and PMs and Directors got involved and Jira boards became published for all to see. (In the beginning it was whiteboards and sticky note).  Standups and Demos were all about self-promotion.  No one ever wanted to take on a task they weren&#x27;t 100% certain they could do.  If a task was 3 point it needed to be done in 3 days or there would be questions.<p>When I left the last company it had gotten outrageous. Every task should be completed in three days and in production in five days - and if not that team was Doing Something Wrong.<p>( We were told that this was standard FAANG practice, I have no idea how true that was )<p>What happened was what you&#x27;d expect - shortcuts, tech debt, unit tests cynically design to pass and meet code coverage expectations instead of actually usefully testing.<p>The reality is that any process is going to fail one senior leadership decides it&#x27;s a way to evaluate engineers, not create a good product.