Agile MythbustersConfirmed or Busted?

Naresh Jain naresh@agilefaqs.com

@nashjain http://nareshjain.com

45 mins Structure

• 10 Mins - Collect and short list facts from the participants

• 30 Mins - Trial of each fact (as many as we can cover in 30 mins)

• 5 Mins - Declare the busted or confirmed status against each fact

Commercial Break!

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Mumbai

Tech Talks!

5 mins - Collect top 5 facts about Agile

According to the Team• Agile requires high discipline - True

• It works better if all departments compliment Agile - True

• Collocation works better - True

• Agile = No Documentation - False (minimal documentation as per your context)

• Scrum of Scrum is most effective way to scale - False (its a pretty centralised, top-down approach. There are more distributed approaches which work better.)

• Distributed Agile does not work due to timezone differences - True (but works better than waterfall style distributed projects)

According to the Team…• Scrum in practice today is very stressful - True (most

often Scrum is mini-waterfalls and hence very stressful)

• Velocity is killing Agility -TRUE (we seemed to have completely missed the point of value delivery.)

• Agile does not mean faster delivery - True (but often leads to faster delivery as we eliminate lots of wastage)

• Pair programming does not require two people to work on the same task - False (two people working on the same task is important to get the value)

According to the Team…• Agile works well in fixed-price, fixed-scope and fixed

timeline projects - False

• Agile is 80% hype and 20% fact - True (as it stands today, its mostly hype, as we seem to have lost the Agile mindset and value-system.)

• For distributed projects, proxy PO & SM is the best thing to do - False (depends on your context.)

• Agile Tools and Process are more important than anything else in life - Clearly False

According to the Team…• PM is the best SM - False (PM can be a good SM if they

have the servant leadership skills.)

• Cross skilling is difficult in Agile - False (Generalising specialists is extremely important part of Agile)

• In Agile, everyone is accountable = no one is accountable - False (Agile is about team ownership and accountability, not individual accountability. We want to move away from heroism culture.)

• Scrum meetings are very productive use of time - False (ceremonies are good, but only in very limited dosage.)

Final Verdict!

Thank you!

Naresh Jain naresh@agilefaqs.com

@nashjain http://nareshjain.com