Agile is a Sham
[Obligatory plug and disclaimer: Agile professional who wrote an earlier rant "Agile Ruined my Life" <a href="http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-my.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2010/09/agile-ruined-...</a> Also I am writing some practical how-to Agile e-books trying to undo some of the damage: <a href="http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm" rel="nofollow">http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm</a> ]<p>Just differentiate between what Agile is and how people are pushing Agile on you. Different things entirely.<p>Agile is best practices around iterative and incremental development. Period. Yes, there's a manifesto and there's Scrum and all sorts of other things, but at the end of the day Agile is a marketing term. A place to go find out what people are trying in order to get better.<p>Two secrets here. One, team success is about 90% dependent on who is on the team. Good teams do well. Bad teams do poorly. But if you're going to have more than one team, you need some way to measure and talk about what they are doing, so you have to have <i>something</i>.<p>Agile -- when done correctly -- is just the minimum amount of <i>something</i> you need to get your work done. It is the minimum amount of process. After all, it's not like you can have no process at all. Whatever you're doing already is a process.<p>I've seen hundreds of teams struggle with Agile, and to me the problem is that we do a really bad job of balancing the difference between "here's a best practice that worked awesome for about 80% of the teams that tried it" and "These are the rules. You must do this." In many shops, Agile is just another way of micro-managing teams, sadly.<p>I can't help that. I also can't help the fact that lots of folks are out to make a buck on certifications and such. I don't think that makes Agile bad. Heck, I'm not even against certifications, although I'd never get one. I just think we take things too far.<p>I like the idea of having a marketing blurb "Agile" where I can go to find out what kinds of new stuff is being done. It helps me pick better reading material.<p>The second secret is that most teams, frankly, are not that good. So you need some kind of way to demonstrate that as well. Making things incrementally and in small iterations lets you see how bad teams are early on. You fail early and often. Then at least you have a bit of a shot at trying to help.<p>But believe me, I feel your pain. Sounds to me like you are a lot more upset at modern marketing and management attitudes than Agile. Remember that we technical folks have a way of over-doing whatever we get into, as I was writing in my blog before your post appeared! (It's still very strange to me watching HN how the same topic comes from multiple writers at the same time) <a href="http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-means-stop-focusing-on-the-wrong-thing/" rel="nofollow">http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-means-stop-focusing-o...</a>