Hacker News Reader

Comment by zzalpha | Hacker News Reader

That's a misuse of the fallacy.

There are some basic practices that are required for an organization to adhere to an agile process. Transparency, accountability, introspection... it really is basic stuff. And either they're doing them, or they're not.

If they're violating the definition of the process, they're not implementing the process.

If someone got into a car accident and didn't have a license, and I said "Yeah, but they aren't a qualified driver", you wouldn't invoke the No True Scotsman fallacy, would you?

View on HN

> Transparency, accountability

These are concepts, not practices. And 'introspection', while arguably being a practice, is really, really not basic stuff. Introspection with actionable outcome is about as basic a practice as "finding inner peace" is.

> If they're violating the definition of the process, they're not implementing the process.

As seen even in just the comments on this submission, if someone follows the definition of the process as laid out in the literature, they are dismissed as being too process-focused and not truly Agile. If someone doesn't exactly follow the definition of the process as laid out in the literature, they are dismissed as not following the rules of Agile.

if someone follows the definition of the process as laid out in the literature,

Agile has no "process as laid out in the literature".

I'm not even sure where this idea comes from.

The Agile manifesto is extremely basic. It contains a few core principles, and everything else is elaboration on them.

This organization is violating even those very basic tenants.

It's possible that, over and above the manifesto they're trying to implement Scrum or Kanban or some other process, and heck, they may be failing to adhere to those processes as well

But if they're not at a bare minimum attempting to live and breathe the values encapsulated in the manifesto, they are by definition not executing an Agile process, since the manifesto defines what "Agile" is.

There is plenty of literature. None of it necessarily agrees with the rest, but Agile proponents over the past 15+ years have produced a copious body of literature. If you disown all of that literature, then all you are left with is some pseudo-religious principles, tenets and values, which is not useful for someone trying to improve a development org. It also make evaluation of its effectiveness impossible as there's no agreement on what's being evaluated.

Living and breathing values and principles entails putting something in to practice which means you need to put a stake in the ground as to "how", instead of just repeating platitudes. If you can't find three people who all agree on what "living and breathing the Agile values" means, then you can't practice Agile at team scale.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com