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