4 ms·

Very insightful observation. As someone who has worked in companies just like the one you described, fully agile startups and horrible hybrids invetween, I thin

Very insightful observation. As someone who has worked in companies just like the one you described, fully agile startups and horrible hybrids invetween, I think that the biggest failure of the application of agile is that persons outside of the development bubble see agile as a solution to old late, overspent, under delivered solutions. Really the agile manifesto needs to be applied top down. Frameworks like SAFe attempt to solve this. In truth the most powerful application of ‘agile’ every entity in an organisation can apply is to fail as fast as possible. third party is slow to interact and hard to deal with? Switch provider or offer assistance. Hiring staff is tough? Look internally at recruitment team and remuneration offered. Project is late and costing to much? Cancel it, don’t pump more more resource in

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Not always possible. The UK has a big infrastructure project called Crossrail, which is running about £2bn over budget is two years late. You can't just walk away from a project on that scale. Nor can you get 10% of the way in, realise you've made some fundamental errors, and start again. In reality project management comes down to three problems - finding and optimising competence, dealing with politics and corruption, and minimising danger from external threats. When projects fail it's almost always because something went wrong in at least one of those areas. Agile can sometimes help with optimising competence, but only if it's run competently. It won't magically transform any org or situation that lacks fundamental competence and/or has problems with the other two areas. Agile itself doesn't seem to recognise this.
- Wildgoose 8y ago
  I thought the problem with Crossrail wasn't that the track wouldn't be ready, it was that the stations wouldn't be ready? In that case, you could concentrate effort on key stations and only add the remaining stations to the timetable when they are available. (I don't know the actual details so I may be missing something. All I know is that there are Barnett consequentials for Crossrail that hands money to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but nothing for we English who don't live in the South East).

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

Not always possible. The UK has a big infrastructure project called Crossrail, which is running about £2bn over budget is two years late. You can't just walk away from a project on that scale. Nor can you get 10% of the way in, realise you've made some fundamental errors, and start again. In reality project management comes down to three problems - finding and optimising competence, dealing with politics and corruption, and minimising danger from external threats. When projects fail it's almost always because something went wrong in at least one of those areas. Agile can sometimes help with optimising competence, but only if it's run competently. It won't magically transform any org or situation that lacks fundamental competence and/or has problems with the other two areas. Agile itself doesn't seem to recognise this.

Wildgoose 8y ago
I thought the problem with Crossrail wasn't that the track wouldn't be ready, it was that the stations wouldn't be ready? In that case, you could concentrate effort on key stations and only add the remaining stations to the timetable when they are available. (I don't know the actual details so I may be missing something. All I know is that there are Barnett consequentials for Crossrail that hands money to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but nothing for we English who don't live in the South East).