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The Agile Community is the Priesthood of the 21st Century

Thomas Hansen on December 30, 2023

Yesterday I shared my thoughts on LinkedIn about agile. I typically get one or two likes on my LinkedIn posts, if I'm lucky a couple of comments. B...
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devdufutur profile image
Rudy Nappée

Agile CAN be defined : agilemanifesto.org/

4 values, 12 principles but you'll never see any rule.

Scrum is not Agile, Agile is not Scrum (btw scrum was created in 1995 and Agile manifesto written in 2001).
Scrum is not even a methodology, it's a framework.

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Great points, but you can ask 20 million developers what Agile methodology they're following, and I suspect 20 million will answer "Scrum" ...

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Rudy Nappée

So blame Scrum not Agile 😉

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Hehe :D

I remember my original fascination for XP back in its early days. The pair programming parts was simply amazing for knowledge sharing. Then a couple of years later (think early 2000s), I adopted CI, which blew me completely away due to its ability to easily fix bugs and get instant feedback.

Agile , and its associated disciplines, has a lot of going for it - However, Bruce Lee was right when he said "No style is better than all styles" ...

Which is kind of the point with my attempt at creating the "whatever works" idea ...

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devdufutur profile image
Rudy Nappée

Indeed but self improvement is part of Agile too 😁

"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly."

There are Indeed numerous methodologies, Agile or not, with benefits but in the end of the day what I really don't wan't is to go back to waterfall. Even if some teams fails in application of Agile values, Agile strenghtened us as developpers in companies by giving us autonomy and by placing us in the heart if the system.

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Try the "whatever" methodology, you'd be surprised at how efficient it is ... ;)

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devdufutur profile image
Rudy Nappée

Indeed ! A self organized team, a working software, responding to change. That is Agile 😁

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𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️ • Edited

I've always been a fan of "agile", in the original sense, software development. Finding workflows and methods that work well for any given project at a given stage in its development, and just overall being focused on getting actual work done.

Agile, as a methodology, has never really appealed much to me. Every look I've had at it has given me the impression that this was once something that worked for some people, and then had to be formalised to make it more appealing to management people.

Nothing in agile sounds necessarily bad, if taken more as a sort of tool belt. But in the end, responding to the necessities resulting from the current reality of a project should always be more important than the rules of some methodology.

"""Agile""" just seems like a scam to me.


Note: When I say """Agile""" is a scam, I'm primarily talking about attempts of over-formalising it into a strict methodology for the purpose of selling books, courses, etc.

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Thomas Hansen

Every look I've had at it has given me the impression that this was once something that worked for some people, and then had to be formalised to make it more appealing to management people

Or, had to be formalised because people are lazy and want easy solutions ...

responding to the necessities resulting from the current reality of a project should always be more important than the rules of some methodology

Word!

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Edited

I saw the LinkedIn thread, and its typical tone policing and toxic positivity.

LinkedIn is such an hostile place to write.

You try to say something but no real discussion of the substance is possible. After all it's a social network, so people are here mostly to waste their time ; but also to sell something in front of many strangers, which is not a great settings for conversations ; anyway everyone scroll down very fast on their smartphone and you have only the two first lines in the post to create a strong impression, so better use click bait if you care about being read.

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

100% spot on, this was exactly what happened. In fact, most of the sceptics literally had "Agile Coach" as their description :D

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

To be fair, I hate so much being on LinkedIn that when I am there, the only reason is that I'm trying to sell something. And you can be in selling mode or in discussion mode, but both at the same time, that's tricky.

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Ivan Zanev

The important thing is the contract. Agile is not serious business just a social game to make people happier and boost morale. Ask yourself how does it map to a statement of work contract? Back-log I have seen with 2 years of tasks stalled. I don't care about the methodology, I care about what has been agreed upon to be done; real work which brings benefits and gets you paid. If people are paying me to appear and do work, that's what I do. The methodology is just an additional record, it isn't an official document. Also, to implement such a methodology, the tasks have to be 4-hours-ish. A task estimated to be 1-week is not really a task. It is hard to implement the methodology and sometimes people think it's just a matter of setting up a board, couple of columns and a back-log. It requires discipline.