[shsteimer_1]

This is what I often describe as doing agile vs being agile. Most large companies are constitutionally incapable of being agile, for a while host if reasons I don’t feel like iterating here, but I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.

But they are more than capable of putting in rules and processes that allow them to do agile. The problem is that doing agile without being agile does far more harm than good.

[BoorishBears]

> Most large companies are constitutionally incapable of being agile, for a while host if reasons I don’t feel like iterating here, but I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.

There's a long list but only one really needs to be mentioned:

Payroll costs $XX,XXX,XXX and is due every 2 weeks.

I've sat through "agile training" and it's the most plain grift I've ever seen.

Selling developers on a deadline-less utopia, but walking it back just enough to not make management types paying for the whole thing balk. Switching which side of the scale their finger is on based on who seems the most engaged at a given moment.

But at the end of the day, it's always predicated on the idea that developers can always provide backpressure against clients.

Well you're free to do that, and clients are free to not pay, and unless your developers will work for client IOUs that's the end of the game.

Agile mentality is great. The idea of rapidly iterating and rapidly producing feedback is great. But "Agile methodology" has evolved into a productivity ponzi scheme meant to add a place for consultants and trainers to insert themselves for $$$

[andrei_says_]

Dave Thomas, one of the co-creators and co-signer of the agile manifesto has a great talk on the topic.

Yes, the Agile Industrial Complex is a total grift and nothing to do with the manifesto.

Him warning about this may or may not have an effect though.

Highly recommended.

https://youtu.be/a-BOSpxYJ9M

[pydry]

If the execs and managers can't get out of the mentality of planning X deliverables for Q3, Y deliverables for Q4 and Z feature by December 10th to satisfy a $10m customer then it becomes hollow and fake no matter how genuine and well meaning the consultants are.

I dont really blame them. They've gotta eat, and occasionally they probably do get a client who is genuinely willing to enact a real transformation. Dysfunctional upper management is the real problem.

[fatnoah]

> This is what I often describe as doing agile vs being agile.

I just started a new role leading a 30 person Engineering team at a company doing Scrum. My very first questions to everyone was why are we doing this? Answers ranged from some expectations like regular/predictable delivery of product to "because that's how software is done." From there, it's figure out a process that makes sense and actually achieves objectives. Scrum provides a nice framework, but everyone needs to be bought into the goals of it first. (My next actions were to get rid of most of the useless workflow rules in Jira and build that accountability at the team level...it works amazingly well that way)

I agree that it's much more doable at a small company. Once companies get big enough, the need to centrally plan and coordinate seem to create an irresistible urge to apply identical processes to all teams, compare velocities, and all sorts of other bad habits.