Why Agile Does Not Work

Have you ever been part of/witnessed a team trying desperately to adopt Agile, and the more they tried to adapt it, more hellish their life became ?

I have seen agile adoption failures. And what I have learned from that experience is, that the problem was not Agile. The problem was the way, the processes through which they were adapting it.

The idea of writing this blog originated when I attended the Certified Scrum Master Training few days back. Apart from my colleagues, who are Agile specialists, and really young for this course, I didn’t find any veterans at all. Other than that, most of the people were quiet experienced PMP certified core project managers. These experienced people, who have been working in a completely different environment, following a king-slave sort of process with engineers had become too rigid with time to be mould in Agile.

This is something that I experienced in those two days. I observed that their thinking majorly revolved around these two points:

• How to utilize every second of a developer’s life.
• How to calculate performance and utilization of each individual.
• How to keep the customer happy at all costs

Even after two days of training and discussions on Agile methodologies, they kept talking about the necessity to calculate the utilization and productivity of each and every individual. It looked like, this was the only thing they cared about. I bet these people will need time (in span of years) to be Agile.

They were also too much concerned about the happiness of the client in every situation. The reality that I have experienced is, you can not keep the client happy on all fronts at the same time. You just need to tell the truth to the client. You tell them what is possible and what is not. And believe me, if you do it from the beginning, the client understands.

What was really disheartening, was that not even a single question was asked about how to create a blissful environment for the development and motivation of team. Agile, which focuses on people over processes, will get a kick in the butt by these guys. The Agile that these managers will follow, will create a situation like that of Hitler’s concentration camps in their teams.

I have seen this before. Let me tell you what will happen. These project managers will modify/customize Agile on their will and make it a tool to micro manage the team they are leading. The reformed Agile will be used as a selling technique to the customers. You might have heard of companies using their own form of Agile for development. These refined forms are customer centric and not team centric.

Few features of the refined/customized Agile could be:

• The burdown chart should always be a straight line.
• The estimates can be decreased, but don’t dare to increase them.
• The scrum meetings could be converted into a status update meeting.
• Work logs to be submitted, instead of updating scrum boards.

Now, why will this happen? Why am I so sure of all this? Am I a frustrated soul who likes to crib? Lets answer these.

Well, the basic thing is, a “team” is Agile, not an “individual”. So, to have a real Agile team, everyone in the team should be well equipped of Agile methodologies. Not only the Agile methodology, but also of how to tackle different scenarios in Agile. You simply can’t train the scrum master, send him back and ask him to train the team he will be leading in Agile. A newly trained, non experienced person in Agile will never have the capability to handle /answer all the scenarios/questions of a practical team. The team needs the same amount of Agile training from Agile veterans as the scrum master. Logically, everyone in the team should have the capability to become the scrum master.

Secondly, a newly trained person can hide the Agile techniques from the team which will cut off his powerful hands to manage them. This can specially be the case if the person has spent managing a non Agile team. These managers will never want to lose their power. This is what they eat of. They wont hit their jobs. The result will be, the suffering of the team.

Now lets look for some solutions. The simple and easy solution is, hire an Agile coach, let him train the team, the manager, the management, the product owner. Let him monitor the working of the team for few iterations. And once you feel you are doing really well, stop paying the Agile coach.

Hire self disciplined and self motivated individual. Agile does not support micro management of individuals. In fact, there are no managers at all. The Scrum Master is just a facilitator who ensures that there are no hurdles in team’s way. So, if you have got people who can utilize this independence of macro management, then just get rid of them. Not everyone can do Agile, always have self managed people in the team.

Finally, keep in mind that it’s not easy to change a person’s thinking and behavior. However, it’s not impossible. So, it will take time (might be in years) . So, be patient. The team will evolve to become Agile, and it will take time. The most important advice will be, try to be a better human being. Don’t think about promotion and money for a year. Think, care about the team. Agile cares a lot about behavior and processes. So, if you are a good human being, this only will create an awesome and blissful environment for your project’s execution.