Getting Rid of Agile in a Few Simple Steps
Or what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object
Hanno Jarvet
www.jarvet.com
Know Thyself
• If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
• If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
• If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.
Sun Tzu
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Terrain
• The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally;
• but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances, constitutes the test of a great general.
Sun Tzu
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Terrain
• Status quo• Organizational culture• Organizational immune system• Law of entropy• Daily focus• Human nature
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Management Issues
• Don’t trust the team or agile. Micromanage both your team members and the process.
• If agile isn’t a silver bullet, blame agile.• Equate self-managing with self-leading and
provide no direction to the team whatsoever.
• Ignore the agile practices.• Undermine the team’s belief in agile.
Source: Mike Cohn and Clinton Keith
www.jarvet.com
Team Issues
• Continually fail to deliver what you committed to deliver during iteration planning.
• Cavalierly move work forward from one iteration to the next. – It’s good to keep the product owner guessing about what will
be delivered.
• Do not create cross-functional teams.– Put all the testers on one team, all the programmers on
another etc.
• Large projects need large teams. – Ignore studies that show productivity decreases with large
teams due to increased communication overhead. Since everyone needs to know everything, invite all fifty people to the daily standup.
Source: Mike Cohn and Clinton Keith
www.jarvet.com
Product Owner Issues
• Don’t communicate a vision for the product to the agile team or to the other stakeholders.
• Don’t pay attention to the progress of each iteration and objectively evaluate the value of that progress.
• Replace a plan document with a plan “in your head” that only you know.
• Have one person share the roles of ScrumMaster and product owner. In fact, have this person also be an individual contributor on the team.
Source: Mike Cohn and Clinton Keith
www.jarvet.com
Process Issues
• Start customizing an agile process before you’ve done it by the book.
• Drop and customize important agile practices before fully understanding them.
• Slavishly follow agile practices without understanding their underlying principles.
• Don’t continually improve.• Don’t change the technical practices.• Rather than align pay, incentives, job titles, promotions,
and recognition with agile, create incentives for individuals to undermine teamwork and shared responsibility.
• Convince yourself that you’ll be able to do all requested work, so the order of your work doesn’t matter.
Source: Mike Cohn and Clinton Keith
www.jarvet.com
Killing Lean
The Seven Principles of Lean:
1. Eliminate Waste 2. Amplify Learning 3. Decide as Late as Possible 4. Deliver as Fast as Possible 5. Empower the Team 6. Build Integrity In 7. See the Whole
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing
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Killing Scrum
• Retrospectives– Blame or stay silent– Decrease or get rid of altogether– No resulting action
• Weak DOD• Long Backlog• Scrum Master is the Product Owner• Use Scrum where it adds no value
Killing KanbanFirst follow the foundational principles
• Start with what you do
now
• Agree to pursue
incremental,
evolutionary change
• Initially, respect current
roles, responsibilities &
job titles then adopt the
core practices
Core practices
1. Visualize
2. Limit WIP
3. Manage Flow
4. Make Process Policies
Explicit
5. Improve Collaboratively
(using models/scientific
method)
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Case Studies
1. Let’s build the team!2. Swedish gaming company3. 3 x 9 months telco cycle
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