Agile is hunky-dory implementation of software development. If it’s on your resume it suddenly means you have experience at “developing software quickly”. Even though you might have been doing this for years without Agile, not it means you are following a process to getting things done.

However, Agile can still be slow, it’s not an immediate switch that all of a sudden people start going faster. Unless you are a brand-new team who are all eager to jump onto a methodology and throw everything else you know out the window, the onboarding to it is not as easy as you might think.

Culture changes abound.

When companies and teams are looking to go to Agile, here are some of the many, many problems I consistently run into.

  1. The development team is agile, no one else is.
  2. Requirements are open-ended, they don’t need to have details (yes they do).
  3. We look at counts of things, in terms of sums. I.e., the number of work items completed instead of the work itself.
  4. Complexity is different for everyone and to have a discussion on what it means, can take too long.
  5. We omit the context for where we are and what we are doing and instead try to follow Agile as it is.

There are probably more to go on here. Agile is slowly becoming the new Waterfall and over the next five years a new methodology will emerge that will save us all once again.

Here is what we are always forgetting when we look at these new methodologies – they are rooted in a team looking to solve an issue – and then giving it a name. Take the same approach, take everything that is great about Agile, Waterfall, CASE, etc, and make something that works for your organization and makes your organization successful.

Unless you’re in the same business, you will keep running up against a wall.

Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US).  I’m also the co-host of the Remotely Prepared podcast.

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