I Will Fucking Haymaker You If You Mention Agile Again

> I am practically drowning in stressed-out managers trying to figure out how they can do Agile better.

I think this highlights a big problem with Agile in many dysfunctional organisations. Management and execs think that “agile” means speed. That adopting agile will shorten the time needed to ship.

The author’s contention that a backlog growing at a faster rate then work getting done also belays a misunderstanding of the purpose of agile.

The author would be correct if everything on the backlog needed to be done. But that’s not the point. A backlog should consist of stories that express a unit of business value. So, that value can change and not everything on the backlog should be seen as having to get done.

Ok, so you don’t like standup meetings. If you’re actually doing agile, then you’re in luck, because the whole point is that the team is considered competent to pick their own process. In the next retrospective, get the others in the team to agree to skip them, and you’re done. Good luck with that if you’re in some Taylorist org. Now, of course, there’s also the case of getting the worst of two worlds, with Scrum handed down from on high. In that case I’d recommend just getting out.

This is an appropriate amount of rage for a standup that went too long.

And, I agree with the author; most stories in most sprints never get done (for a million reasons, 999,999 of them foundational) and just roll over from sprint to sprint to sprint until the inevitable collapse of the company (via M&A).

Disappointed by the tone, sounds like a bad place to work at

>> Why do you have to have the daily meetings if all the details are supposed to be on the cards?

> I didn't have an answer for them because there is no answer.

Ahh - it’s just a misunderstanding

Each and every time I hear the world "Agile" at work, I get depressed.

It's everything but agile. It's always Scrum. It's always implemented as a way to pressure people to deliver faster, without ever reducing the scope.

The worst I've seen recently is business entities adopting "agile" and thinking that they're making progress. They get trained by certified Scrum "Masters" and embark on a painful journey, without even realizing that they're just brainwashed to use a super rigid approach...

It's humorous, but for many types of projects, incremental development with frequent feedback (on working software) is the only way to move forward.

Agreed the ceremonies, tools, and general cargo culting sucks, and yes it likely means your product development planning is bad, etc. But living through development in pre-agile days, and 9-12 month fixed date SaaS projects with death march at the end, no thanks!

I get many young guys are fine with that D-Day style development, but not me sorry. I need work-life balance.

Of course a post critical of the technoreligion of HN gets flagged. The zealots always have zero tolerance for the apostates.

I don't like this article. What will happen if Agile people all of a sudden stop preaching Agile or slightly rename it to Extreme Programming or something? how will we know then who's not a qualified project/product manager? how can we filter out orgs that don't know what they are doing?

Agile is super-useful. As a filter. Let's not break this, please.

It feels like there’s been more of these sorts of posts lately that seem to embrace writing in an angry/raging tone, to the point that as a reader it’s hard (for me) not to lump them into the same category as those facebook/instagram memes circa-2018-19 that all began with “So let me get this straight…” (i.e. hard to take them seriously).

Among other things it’s distracting and it makes some assumptions about the frame of mindset of the person reading it that may not be accurate, when you start pushing this stuff out to larger audiences.

Anyways, it’s a shame because it detracts from what otherwise would be a set of valid (if well-known and frequently posted) criticisms of agile.

> And that's ignoring all the retros that result in nothing, and grooming the backlog that we'll never clear and Christ, just stop.

This is the issue right here. If you're doing these tasks with no quantifiable benefit (useful retro outcomes, better understood backlog, ...) then sure, there is no use in continuing them. However, just because some teams fail at these tasks doesn't mean the tasks themselves are useless.

Mostly it's just that standup devolves into a non-useful transfer of what's happening.

If everyone is alone doing standup - and so often they rather are more alone than not - it illuminates how little the business groks itself. It defeats purpose when no one does a good job sharing yours.

Ideally we would have check-in points there meaningful exchange of what happened occurs.

our standup is supposed to be max 30 minutes and our product manager frequently runs over time with a bunch of discussion and debate that goes nowhere. Recently, I've taken to just leaving at the 30 minute mark for "my next meeting" or I turn my camera off and fire up my playstation. Highly recommend either option.

Agile isn't about raising the bar, it's about raising the floor. Agile is for the worst employees, not the best ones. It's about holding their hands through every single moment of their workday, and letting go at 5PM to say "see you tomorrow!"

It's a complete joke.

> You're agreeing to everything because your stakeholders are whiny children with a deficient understanding of business and no one can say no to them.

That was for sure the case before agile, when the only decision maker was the project manager.

Somebody needs a hug.

What does it mean to go Haymaker on you, am I up against the Amish? That being said I've seen agile fail so hard in so many ways. Currently I'm dealing with incomponent people trying to design and assign tasks.