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Most of the consultants/junior developers/managers and others who try to shoehorn "agile" into every process and team doesn't seem to have actually read the ori

Most of the consultants/junior developers/managers and others who try to shoehorn "agile" into every process and team doesn't seem to have actually read the original "agile manifesto", which is: > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools > Working software over comprehensive documentation > Customer collaboration over contract negotiation > Responding to change over following a plan

xg15 4y ago
But couldn't this "ossification" of agile be a sign that the manifesto is actually wrong? A lot of the criticism seems to form around the fact that people actually develop processes around agile, even though agile discourages processes. (And that those processes in the end become empty rituals that hinder development more than support it) But couldn't this actually be a sign that people in fact need processes to get some kind of routine and system into their work?
myth2018 4y ago
I agree with you. But even the Manifesto has some points that make it impractical in many circumstances. To stick with a single example: is it safe to favor customer collaboration over contract negotiation when dealing with high budget projects? Changes in requirements, delays, reprioritizing in client's side, those are all things we know that may happen. How are we going to deal with them after you favored customer collaboration, and that collaboration doesn't exist anymore? Agile requires Trust. But trust is a fluid thing, and we must cope with its fluctuations. The client is cooperating? Good, let's get a bit liberal about some rules, but let's keep monitoring the situation. The team is mature enough to self-manage? Good, let the team manage itself, but keep an eye to see if things are still running smoothly as the time goes by. The biggest problem of Agile is that it takes Trust for granted and assumes that every single stakeholder wants the project to succeed, and shares the exact same definition of success.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > To stick with a single example: is it safe to favor customer collaboration over contract negotiation when dealing with high budget projects? Yes, but note that the client is inside the circle, not an external force, in Agile. > Changes in requirements, delays, reprioritizing in client's side, those are all things we know that may happen. Yes, that is specifically what the point deals with, on both sides. Favoring contract negotiation over collaboration is a very poor way of dealing with those things. (The X over Y statements in the Manifesto are not X instead of Y, but Y must be centered on supporting X; contract negotiation is necessary, but the terms must be framed to support collaboration rather than impede it by being inflexible for the kinds of things that are known to be likely to change over the time of the project development.) > How are we going to deal with them after you favored customer collaboration, and that collaboration doesn't exist anymore? If the need for collaboration was centered in contract negotiation, then that will be addressed. > The biggest problem of Agile is that it takes Trust for granted The biggest problem (though far from only) problem of Agile is that the authors of the Manifesto underestimated the degree to which people would misread “over” as “instead of”, even given an explicit admonition that that reading was incorrect, making the Manifesto terse and catchy, but ineffective in communicating it's core ideas.
  - skrtskrt 4y ago
    If you don’t protect yourself with a contract, another party will screw you 11 times out of 10. By all means collaborate, but put it in a contract too.
    - jacobr1 4y ago
      One of the subtleties is how to determine acceptance criteria by the stakeholders/client. You can negotiate upfront a spec, and upon delivery conformance to the spec means success. Or you could negotiate a high-level objective, or a metric to be changed, and every sprint get an on-the-fly approval of the incremental changes delivered. The key is understanding the upfront spec, while a necessary stating point, is almost certainly wrong, maybe fundamentally so. So how are renegotiations handled?
  - myth2018 4y ago
- dasil003 4y ago
  These are good points, but trust is not a prerequisite only for Agile. IMHO all large-scale software projects require trust to create space for the team to figure out the right path. If trust is lacking, it needs to be established, but the actions and steps that need to be taken are highly contextual and outside the scope of the Agile Manifesto.
  - myth2018 4y ago
    I agree it's needed and it must be established if lacking, but 1) sometimes it's too unstable and you need institutional devices to counterbalance, but such devices are dismissed as useless bureaucracy in agile ideology and 2) agile seems to assume an idyllic world in which trust is established a priori and can be safely taken for granted
DreamFlasher 4y ago
> consultants/junior developers/managers and others who try to shoehorn "agile" into every process and team This is in itself a major point. Managers trying to put scrum on everything. This is my main hope for scrum passing away. I have seen it now several times companies deciding to use scrum for research projects, and after a year they all realize how bad of an idea that is. On the other hand so far I haven't worked for a single company that actually did scrum (despite claiming it). They all started by "adjusting the process" and removing the scrum master. Sure. You totally understood how this works.

xg15 4y ago

But couldn't this "ossification" of agile be a sign that the manifesto is actually wrong? A lot of the criticism seems to form around the fact that people actually develop processes around agile, even though agile discourages processes. (And that those processes in the end become empty rituals that hinder development more than support it) But couldn't this actually be a sign that people in fact need processes to get some kind of routine and system into their work?

myth2018 4y ago

I agree with you. But even the Manifesto has some points that make it impractical in many circumstances. To stick with a single example: is it safe to favor customer collaboration over contract negotiation when dealing with high budget projects? Changes in requirements, delays, reprioritizing in client's side, those are all things we know that may happen. How are we going to deal with them after you favored customer collaboration, and that collaboration doesn't exist anymore? Agile requires Trust. But trust is a fluid thing, and we must cope with its fluctuations. The client is cooperating? Good, let's get a bit liberal about some rules, but let's keep monitoring the situation. The team is mature enough to self-manage? Good, let the team manage itself, but keep an eye to see if things are still running smoothly as the time goes by. The biggest problem of Agile is that it takes Trust for granted and assumes that every single stakeholder wants the project to succeed, and shares the exact same definition of success.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> To stick with a single example: is it safe to favor customer collaboration over contract negotiation when dealing with high budget projects? Yes, but note that the client is inside the circle, not an external force, in Agile. > Changes in requirements, delays, reprioritizing in client's side, those are all things we know that may happen. Yes, that is specifically what the point deals with, on both sides. Favoring contract negotiation over collaboration is a very poor way of dealing with those things. (The X over Y statements in the Manifesto are not X instead of Y, but Y must be centered on supporting X; contract negotiation is necessary, but the terms must be framed to support collaboration rather than impede it by being inflexible for the kinds of things that are known to be likely to change over the time of the project development.) > How are we going to deal with them after you favored customer collaboration, and that collaboration doesn't exist anymore? If the need for collaboration was centered in contract negotiation, then that will be addressed. > The biggest problem of Agile is that it takes Trust for granted The biggest problem (though far from only) problem of Agile is that the authors of the Manifesto underestimated the degree to which people would misread “over” as “instead of”, even given an explicit admonition that that reading was incorrect, making the Manifesto terse and catchy, but ineffective in communicating it's core ideas.
- skrtskrt 4y ago
  If you don’t protect yourself with a contract, another party will screw you 11 times out of 10. By all means collaborate, but put it in a contract too.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    One of the subtleties is how to determine acceptance criteria by the stakeholders/client. You can negotiate upfront a spec, and upon delivery conformance to the spec means success. Or you could negotiate a high-level objective, or a metric to be changed, and every sprint get an on-the-fly approval of the incremental changes delivered. The key is understanding the upfront spec, while a necessary stating point, is almost certainly wrong, maybe fundamentally so. So how are renegotiations handled?
- myth2018 4y ago
dasil003 4y ago
These are good points, but trust is not a prerequisite only for Agile. IMHO all large-scale software projects require trust to create space for the team to figure out the right path. If trust is lacking, it needs to be established, but the actions and steps that need to be taken are highly contextual and outside the scope of the Agile Manifesto.
- myth2018 4y ago
  I agree it's needed and it must be established if lacking, but 1) sometimes it's too unstable and you need institutional devices to counterbalance, but such devices are dismissed as useless bureaucracy in agile ideology and 2) agile seems to assume an idyllic world in which trust is established a priori and can be safely taken for granted

DreamFlasher 4y ago

> consultants/junior developers/managers and others who try to shoehorn "agile" into every process and team This is in itself a major point. Managers trying to put scrum on everything. This is my main hope for scrum passing away. I have seen it now several times companies deciding to use scrum for research projects, and after a year they all realize how bad of an idea that is. On the other hand so far I haven't worked for a single company that actually did scrum (despite claiming it). They all started by "adjusting the process" and removing the scrum master. Sure. You totally understood how this works.