Survey Results: Do People Hate Agile?

Last time I asked you what you think about Agile and, specifically, if you dislike it, as more and more people seem to, if the youtube videos and forums are to be believed. I wanted to see if that was also the feeling in my network.

Let me show you your answers.

I will also discuss this in more detail, including my opinions and observations of how Agile is done and what mistakes people make with it, on a?live stream here on Linkedin ?on Monday the 13th, 12:30 Romania time.

Your Answers

Most of the answers were from people who had a lot of experience with Agile.?

41.2% did Scrum, 23.5% chose “Flexible/Custom” (although some of the other answers people chose to manually type in could also be included here), 11.8% SAFe.

And the big one, what are your feeling on agile, surprisingly or not, mostly positive answers.

I will discuss these answers and more of my opinions and observations about how Agile is done in detail in?the live stream on Monday here on Linkedin .

Detailed Answers

Here’s the narrative answers I got, anonymous of course (as was the entire survey).

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“Agile methodologies are frameworks, that can be implemented very well, to serve the purpose of the team, or badly, ending up in power battles, useless time waisting meetings and artifacts of no use. If you take what you need and focus on adapting for your purpose, any methodology can help you be more efficient. The latest star of the show, SAFe, seems to be the most dogmatic and can quickly become an overhead if you miss the purpose of the methodology and you focus too much on ticking all check boxes to implement it perfectly.”

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“I've seen it as pure overhead and delays, while not providing speed or flexibility or reporting benefits. Also Agile (regardless of methodology) is supposed to be chosen by the team but it is invariably imposed from outside. It's better to use classic Gantt with time-based estimation with an understanding of the capabilities of team members.”

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“I dislike religious adoptions unless they cannot be avoided because an organization still requires a lot of security from rules. In this case there can sometimes be some sense in being rigorous about certain practices. What I really love about agile is how it reflects a mindset which is seen as psychologically healthy in individuals and relationships even beyond work (the agile manifesto is such an example). Trust others where they are competent, learn what can be improved, be responsible for what you have promised to do, don’t put more onto your plate than you can handle etc. To me, agile is a philosophy which few people would disagree to - but which unfortunately often comes with a set of rules on top of existing and conflicting rules that lead to massive frustration. I love Alistair Cockburn‘s take on agile with the Heart of Agile.”

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“How well can Agile methodology help transform a political workplace?”

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“Agile became a process, a dogma and true agility is extremely rare.”

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“Like: respond to change, flexibility, collaboration. Dislike: difficult to create planning and have predictability, needed for the rest of the organization beyond r&d, which is non agile ( e. g. Sales, marketing)”

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“I hate the rigidity around it, around the processes and the religiousness of sticking to what the team already committed to. As if one or another methodology can put an end to all the problems. We do demos just because we have a blocked calendar slot, we do crunch times because the sprint has 2 weeks and we cannot come to terms with the fact that estimates are just that, estimates, they don't perfectly fit in a fixed number of hours. We do retros that go nowhere, when we could have talked to each other more naturally every day. We can hardly assess risks, interruptions, helping each other and generally our own work and rhythm, but we commit to completing a task in X days /hours. We fight about correctly assessing complexity in story points, as if it is a big deal if it is a 2 or a 3. Of course, what we don't know that we don't know flies under the radar or SP, as many other things. As if it is really that important to nail it from the planning.”

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“That we let just about anyone teach others. And that some of them do it poorly.”

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“I hate when people (specially scrum masters) take it religiously and do it stupidly. I like its flexibility and productivity.”

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“From my xp, i found multiple reasons that that creating the perception that agile is useless. Starting from business pressure for predictability on delivery and costs, to the organizations not being mature enough or do not really understand/ adopt agile truly, aligning the organization in matter of agile principles, values and delivery. Also, scrum masters doing it badly, blocking calendars with ceremonies that do not create clarity, alignment and added value and the developers that work differently from managers, feeling disrupted by meetings and not understanding clearly what's in it for them. And last, the mindset of retrospective, to consistently evaluate what is the most efficient way to work. Inspect and adapt. Agile offers this flexibility, the discussion is obviously nuanced and longer, however i believe the key is to adapt your way of working in an agile way to fulfill business needs, not blindly following a trend.”

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“I like it gives the team structure and predictability if done right. Sometimes it can be too much for a very small project, or not enough for a gigantic project that doesn’t have clear requirements and it is a continuous discovery learning the project. The keyword here is “depends”. But despite that, I didn’t find an alternative that suits better in those scenarios. Would be nice to hear what other processes could we as a team adopt.”

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“I don’t like the latest trend where team no longer have defined and specialized roles. Testers no longer test, they teach others to test. Devs test too. I thought it was specific to a project, but apparently that’s the direction”

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“Business and politics do not afford agile. They do not afford to be wrong. From that level they are agile any way - one command and the focus of many teams shifts - and they are agile.”