[warfangle]

I feel the exact same way. And I've had the same exact experience: only one place in my decade long career has done agile well.

The Project Manager was completely on point with gathering information from stakeholders and direction from executives. The scrum master was a perfect neutral voice who really did an amazing job mediating. Our team was full of smart, capable, focused multidisciplinary engineers. It was absolutely beautiful.

I've also never ever seen it again. I've been trying to figure out what was different about that org than everywhere else. Because I've always worked with smart, social SWEs.

I think the problems arising from cargo cult agile are more fundamental than the methodology. In order for agile to work well for SWEs, the organization's infrastructure and expectations must be a fit. There are key things that I saw at the place where it worked and were missing everywhere else.

* Strong product ownership. The PM is the captain of the ship. They must interface with the execs, with the customers, with the technologists, with the customer service. They must synthesize the stories and effectively outline clear exit criteria for them. And they must accept input from engineering to prioritize tasks that must be done but do not necessarily directly provide customer value. But the buck stops with them. Engineering should not be subject to department infighting for prioritization of pet features. The direction must be clear, or you're foundering.

* A neutral voice in the planning meetings to keep things on track and ensure everyone who has a question / input is heard.

* Demo days. It's so important for the morale of everyone - on the team and off - for the exposition of the completed work for a given sprint.

* Respectful retrospection.

* Trust and verification. Micro management is toxic. The only time other than sprint planning that the PM should be involved with the daily work of engineers is when a story requirement needs clarification.

And modifying the scope of an in progress sprint should be relegated _only_ to emergencies. This cannot happen if there are _always_ emergencies, though. Which is why it's important for a PM to understand and allocate time for maintenance / infrastructure improvement.