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As someone who worked both as a developer/engineer and as a project manager, the simple answer is a lot of novice (polit word for idiot) PMs choose agile and tr

As someone who worked both as a developer/engineer and as a project manager, the simple answer is a lot of novice (polit word for idiot) PMs choose agile and try to force it on a team just because they heard X famous company applied it or their previous company applied it in some project and worked, but at the end of the day, it is just a tool like any tool you use, it might work in some specific occasion, but definitely it is not the best for everything, and you as a PM who’s getting paid for that specific task, it’s your responsibility to know this, customize it or even create a new approach to achieve the end goal. I have seen and heard so much horror stories of how some PMs are abusing it, or misuse it due to lack of training and knowledge, I remember a friend once said they had a meeting to discuss meetings.. or when some PM try to apply scrum for some niche engineering project with small team where scrum assumes everyone in the team can do the same task, and your engineers have completely different disciplines to start with, list goes on.

petsfed 3y ago
I call this "cargo cult management", where they pick up the trappings of an effective team, but do nothing to take on the mindset. If your meeting is an hour and a half long, and each person speaks for 10 minutes a piece, then it ain't a standup. And that's OK. Trying to force agile onto a team that only does ongoing manual processes is doomed to failure, and its OK to say that out loud. Not every task must be conceptualized as a story, and it's OK to admit that.
palata 3y ago
I worked for a company where the story points of all the separate teams were brought up to management, who would then convert that to time in order to bill customers. Instead of time-sheeting, they were using agile story points, without understanding that the whole damn point is that one point in one team could be worth ten points in another team.

petsfed 3y ago

I call this "cargo cult management", where they pick up the trappings of an effective team, but do nothing to take on the mindset. If your meeting is an hour and a half long, and each person speaks for 10 minutes a piece, then it ain't a standup. And that's OK. Trying to force agile onto a team that only does ongoing manual processes is doomed to failure, and its OK to say that out loud. Not every task must be conceptualized as a story, and it's OK to admit that.

palata 3y ago

I worked for a company where the story points of all the separate teams were brought up to management, who would then convert that to time in order to bill customers. Instead of time-sheeting, they were using agile story points, without understanding that the whole damn point is that one point in one team could be worth ten points in another team.