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One of the issues I found with the Agile implementation in my current company is that there's no longer an architectural/technical leadership within the team A

One of the issues I found with the Agile implementation in my current company is that there's no longer an architectural/technical leadership within the team Agile Coach here. Yes, this is toxic to quality and technical excellence. The typical hybrid Scrum/corporate org chart I find puts product ownership (the “business”) in control and leaves each team’s tech lead (responsible for getting the team to the sprint goal) as the last line of defense of quality and technical excellence. What ends up happening, tech leads with no technical air cover give up craftsmanship in exchange for making the product owner happy and therefore keeping their job. A number of companies are going to wake up in a few years with an agile hangover of legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace. Should make a lot of consultants a lot of money.

wpietri 8y ago
Definitely. When the Agile movement started out, it was very much about empowering teams to do good work. But the form that won, Scrum, was the one least disruptive to existing corporate hierarchies. (At least until somebody invented SAFe, a comically unagile Agile process.) I have very rarely seen "we're doing Agile" shops where technical concerns weren't entirely overruled by business concerns, when the goal of many early Agile proponents was to bring them back in balance. (And here I use "business concerns" advisedly, in that they're often much more about the political concerns of managers, not the actual needs of customers or the business.) Your point about "legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace" is spot on. If an org does a big rewrite without fixing the problems that got them the mess, they just get another mess. Switching from manager-dominated waterfall to manager-dominated mini-waterfall with some Agile labels slapped on doesn't fix the broken feedback loops and distorted values that created the legacy garbage. It would be as if George Washington had declared himself king after the Revolutionary War, or when a left-wing dictator overthrows a right-wing dictator. Deeper change is necessary.

wpietri 8y ago

Definitely. When the Agile movement started out, it was very much about empowering teams to do good work. But the form that won, Scrum, was the one least disruptive to existing corporate hierarchies. (At least until somebody invented SAFe, a comically unagile Agile process.) I have very rarely seen "we're doing Agile" shops where technical concerns weren't entirely overruled by business concerns, when the goal of many early Agile proponents was to bring them back in balance. (And here I use "business concerns" advisedly, in that they're often much more about the political concerns of managers, not the actual needs of customers or the business.) Your point about "legacy garbage rivaling the mountain of shit they used agile to replace" is spot on. If an org does a big rewrite without fixing the problems that got them the mess, they just get another mess. Switching from manager-dominated waterfall to manager-dominated mini-waterfall with some Agile labels slapped on doesn't fix the broken feedback loops and distorted values that created the legacy garbage. It would be as if George Washington had declared himself king after the Revolutionary War, or when a left-wing dictator overthrows a right-wing dictator. Deeper change is necessary.