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One reason is to shift blame. I've seen countless developers use the "if only we were truly agile the project would be fine" excuse. Another reason is ego/power

One reason is to shift blame. I've seen countless developers use the "if only we were truly agile the project would be fine" excuse. Another reason is ego/power. Developers can use the "we know agile better than the project managers" mantra to drive change within a project that they couldn't before. At the end of the day successful projects happen because of good communication, clear requirements and hard work. No amounts of tricks can save you if you don't have all three.

CodeMage 14y ago
Funny, what you call out here is quite similar to what I've witnessed, too, only I have a different point of view. For example, "we know agile better than the project managers" often comes from people who find themselves in yet another cargo-cult agile environment with a Scrum master who not only doesn't have a clue about Scrum, but is also pretty much convinced that it's a wrong idea and therefore doesn't give a shit about what he's doing and whether the latest process-related brainwave coming from above is one step forward or -- more likely -- two step backwards. In such circumstances, you really do know more about agile than managers when you 1) say that it defeats the purpose of Scrum to have people filling out how many hours they've spent working on an item alongside how many they have left, 2) point out the inefficiency and banality of hour-long discussions on whether we move the user story from one sprint into the next one or create a copy of it, 3) complain about having 1-2 hours of sprint planning, a 1-hour mid-sprint review meeting and 1-2 hours of sprint review on top of 30-minute daily meetings in a 2-week sprint and 4) wonder why nobody seems to have read the bloody agile manifesto itself. So when you hear "if only we were truly agile" coming from a dev, maybe it's not an incompetent egomaniac on a power trip looking to shift the blame for the things that don't work. Maybe it's someone like me who is sick to the core of managers who can't hear you because their head is up their ass -- yet somehow there's always enough place in their for yet another "Agile" consultant's shaft to get cozy with. Yes, I'm bitter. That doesn't make me wrong.

CodeMage 14y ago

Funny, what you call out here is quite similar to what I've witnessed, too, only I have a different point of view. For example, "we know agile better than the project managers" often comes from people who find themselves in yet another cargo-cult agile environment with a Scrum master who not only doesn't have a clue about Scrum, but is also pretty much convinced that it's a wrong idea and therefore doesn't give a shit about what he's doing and whether the latest process-related brainwave coming from above is one step forward or -- more likely -- two step backwards. In such circumstances, you really do know more about agile than managers when you 1) say that it defeats the purpose of Scrum to have people filling out how many hours they've spent working on an item alongside how many they have left, 2) point out the inefficiency and banality of hour-long discussions on whether we move the user story from one sprint into the next one or create a copy of it, 3) complain about having 1-2 hours of sprint planning, a 1-hour mid-sprint review meeting and 1-2 hours of sprint review on top of 30-minute daily meetings in a 2-week sprint and 4) wonder why nobody seems to have read the bloody agile manifesto itself. So when you hear "if only we were truly agile" coming from a dev, maybe it's not an incompetent egomaniac on a power trip looking to shift the blame for the things that don't work. Maybe it's someone like me who is sick to the core of managers who can't hear you because their head is up their ass -- yet somehow there's always enough place in their for yet another "Agile" consultant's shaft to get cozy with. Yes, I'm bitter. That doesn't make me wrong.