Yeah I said it.
Companies bigger than an actual startup, if you’re doing agile, just stop.
Please for the love of the world, just stop. You’re likely kidding yourselves if you think you’re doing agile anyway.
I have worked with small companies that are “doing agile” and I have worked at large companies that are “doing agile”. Do you know how many of them have read the Agile Manifesto?
Zero. (Again from my experience)
At one company for whom I worked (I won’t mention their name here) when I introduced them to the concepts in the Agile Manifesto, it made them rethink most everything they were doing in their SDLC.
Seriously.
The meeting we were in at the time, stopped. They literally went back to the whiteboard. Right then.
So what that tells me is most places, and certainly every place I’ve been, equate “agile” with “code faster”. However it’s not about that. “Code faster” is not an SDLC .. that’s a corporate culture.
Begin Slightly-Related-Side-Rant …
High quality software has more to do with paying attention to what you’re doing and communicating well, than with how quickly you can write it.
Yes deadlines matter. However all places I have worked simply make agile mean “developers have less requirements and communication, deadlines are shorter and expectations are higher”.
Kids that’s not Agile. It is crazy though.
.. End Slightly-Related-Side-Rant
Most places aren’t familiar with what Agile really is intended to be.
They aren’t familiar with the tenets of it. And even worse, when they are fairly familiar with the tenets, they cherry pick from it like a buffet.
Oh I know. I hear your eyes rolling.
“Rob you’re supposed to be able to just use what you want from it. Thats the great thing about Agile.”
And I agree.
Let’s just agree there is a line which, once crossed, really makes your process not agile and instead more of an iterative-waterfall-approach.
Let’s take a breath. The ‘iterative-waterfall-approach’ kind of process is ok guys and gals.
Don’t “do agile” to be cool. Don’t just hang “story points” on requirements and documentation that took you a month to create and call that “agile”.
A manager once said to me, “don’t get caught up in the tools”.
And that’s good advice here too.
If agile, real agile, fits your business need then saddle up pardner. Ride that horse.
If not though, please find something that does. And that something, is likely the waterfall-approach.
And there is nothing wrong with that.