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I agree there's a mismatch between the Agile Manifesto and most of the concrete methods described as "Agile", especially when it comes to how much individuality

by matfil 8y ago

I agree there's a mismatch between the Agile Manifesto and most of the concrete methods described as "Agile", especially when it comes to how much individuality is valued. I am not at all convinced it's fair to blame this entirely on the methodology side. The eXtreme Programming book was published in 1999 (and had been talked about before then). Scrum is a little harder to pin down, but a book was published in 2001 (around the same time as the Agile Manifesto), but the ideas were definitely circulating before that. There were other concrete methodologies which fed in, _e.g._ Alistair Cockburn's "Crystal" methods, which seem to have faded away. In any case, the people pushing the methodologies overlap very substantially with the people who originally signed the manifesto.

dragonwriter 8y ago
But it's not really the methodologies themselves as the approach to methodology that is problematic, and of the major “Agile” methodologies, only Scrum really bakes the inflexibility in to the first party approach to the methodology (if you aren't following every jot and tittle of The Scrum Guide™ under the guidance of a certified Professional Scrum Master™, you aren't really doing Scrum.) Most “Agile” methods are fine starting points for adapting a methodology to your team needs, which is the only thing a published methodology should be if one takes the values of the Agile Manifesto seriously. But the even where they aren't actively pushed as rigid, one-size fits all, certification and standardization driven monoliths like Scrum, they tend to fail to actually address Agile application...
- matfil 8y ago
  Scrum isn't the only offender. By-the-book XP is pretty rigid about some things, too (collective ownership and pairing in particular). Agree that the consulting/certification industry makes things worse. Again, that overlaps with the signatories for the original manifesto.

by matfil 8y ago

dragonwriter 8y ago

But it's not really the methodologies themselves as the approach to methodology that is problematic, and of the major “Agile” methodologies, only Scrum really bakes the inflexibility in to the first party approach to the methodology (if you aren't following every jot and tittle of The Scrum Guide™ under the guidance of a certified Professional Scrum Master™, you aren't really doing Scrum.) Most “Agile” methods are fine starting points for adapting a methodology to your team needs, which is the only thing a published methodology should be if one takes the values of the Agile Manifesto seriously. But the even where they aren't actively pushed as rigid, one-size fits all, certification and standardization driven monoliths like Scrum, they tend to fail to actually address Agile application...

matfil 8y ago
Scrum isn't the only offender. By-the-book XP is pretty rigid about some things, too (collective ownership and pairing in particular). Agree that the consulting/certification industry makes things worse. Again, that overlaps with the signatories for the original manifesto.