Agile is Dead :: Aginext London 2018

1. Agile is Dead
by Pedro Gustavo Torres
2018

2. Engineering Director @
Agilist since 2010
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer
Pedro Gustavo Torres

3. _pedro_torres
pedrogustavotorres
pedrogustavotorres.com
pedro.gustavo.torres@gmail.com
Pedro Gustavo Torres

4. Pedro Gustavo Torres

5. Pedro Gustavo Torres
2016
2017
2018
2016

6. Agile and Scrum were “invented” a long time ago

7. Agile and Scrum were “invented” a long time ago

8. Agile and Scrum were “invented” a long time ago
2001
Tony Blair is re-elected Prime
Minister of the UK
The Agile movement started (with
the Manifesto)
1995
Eric Cantona’s kung-fu kick on
Crystal Palace fan
Scrum was invented by Ken
Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland

9. People talk about it like if it was something new
But it is not!

10. So what is Agile?
“Ability to deliver early value to your customers”

11. So what is Agile?
“Ability to deliver early value to your customers”

12. And Scrum?
Scrum is a framework based on empiricism: inspection, adaption and
transparency

13. How does this fits together?

14. How does this fits together?
JIRA, Daily Standups...

15. How does this fits together?
JIRA, Daily Standups...
Scrum, XP...

16. How does this fits together?
Scrum, XP...
Behaviour
JIRA, Daily Standups...

17. How does this fits together?
Scrum, XP...
Agility
Behaviour
JIRA, Daily Standups...

18. A picture is worth one thousand words...
Tools & Processes, Practices
Principles, Values, Mindset

19. Beware of the Cargo Cult

20. Beware of the Cargo Cult

21. What is the current adoption of Agile?
94% of adoption?

22. I find it hard to believe

23. Or you are lucky enough to born Agile…

24. …and this looks like your workplace

25. Or you’ll need to go through an Agile transition…

26. …and this looks like your workplace…

27. …usually just to be able to say: “We’re Agile!”

28. Typical Agile opposing force…
Boss
Manager
Manager Manager
Dev Dev Dev Dev Dev

29. Typical Agile opposing force…
Boss
Manager
Manager
Manager
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev

30. …Managers!

31. Questionable Agile
Bad Agile
Crappy Agile
frAgile
Dark Scrum

32. Let’s look again to the manifesto
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change over Following a Plan

33. Let’s look again to the manifesto
Left Side Agile Right Side Agile
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change over Following a Plan

34. Let’s look again to the manifesto
Left Good Side Agile Right Bad Side Agile
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change over Following a Plan
Bad Agile
Crappy Agile
frAgile
Dark Scrum

35. Right Bad Side Agile
Does your company have a QA team?

36. Right Bad Side Agile
Do your sprint burndowns look like this?

37. Right Bad Side Agile
Do your release burndowns look like this?

38. Right Bad Side Agile
Does your company ignores XP practices (e.g. Pair Programming)?
You don’t have CI / CD pipelines?
How long does it take to put in production one single line of code through your
normal development life cycle?

39. Right Bad Side Agile
Are you a JIRA slave?
- Daily Standups without a physical whiteboard
- Daily Standups in front of a TV
- Retrospectives in front of your laptop so that you can
write the confluence page

40. Right Bad Side Agile
Do you have dependencies between teams in order to get stuff delivered?

41. Right Bad Side Agile
Your teams don’t have Autonomy? Mastery? Purpose?

42. Right Bad Side Agile
Your teams don’t have Autonomy? Mastery? Purpose?
Intrinsic
Motivation

43. Right Bad Side Agile
Are you afraid of having your velocity dropped?
Or afraid of not having 100% sprint completeness (story points delivered vs
committed)?
Do you have managers asking to close untested user stories just because the
graphs need to “look good”.

44. Right Bad Side Agile
Are you afraid of having your velocity dropped?
Or afraid of not having 100% sprint completeness (story points delivered vs
committed)?
Do you have managers asking to close untested user stories just because the
graphs need to “look good”.
1. Psychological safety
The five keys to a successful Google team

45. Right Bad Side Agile
You don’t know the velocity/capacity of your teams? Is it per person or per team?

46. Right Bad Side Agile
How many of you still estimate in time (e.g. days, hours)?
Or have points directly translated into time (e.g. 1 point equals to 1 day)?
Do you know if points means time, complexity or effort?
Have you ever heard of the #NoEstimates movement?

47. Right Bad Side Agile
Your teams aren’t doing DevOps?
- making their own releases?
- supporting their applications in live?
- doing on-call?

48. Right Bad Side Agile
Are your performance reviews only at the individual level?

49. Right Bad Side Agile
Do you manage the resources instead of the flow?

50. Right Bad Side Agile
Are you just being Agile in Software Engineering? What about the rest of the
company?
Where is the learning fast and improve? How long do you need to wait to get
customer's feedback?

51. Right Bad Side Agile
Agile experts/guru/coaches saying:
- "It depends”
- “I’m not here to give you answers”
- "Agile is something that you feel"
- “Fail fast, fail cheap”
- “Celebrate failure”
- “We are Agile… we don’t have deadlines”

52. No wonder some folks announced Agile’s “death”
Agile is Dead… Long live continuous delivery
Agile is Dead… Long live code reviews

53. No wonder some folks announced Agile’s “death”
Agile is Dead… Long live continuous delivery
Agile is Dead… Long live code reviews
But they don’t
make any sense

54. eXtreme Programming “belongs” to Agile

55. But we also saw some legit “deaths”
Agile is Dead… Long live Lean
Agile is Dead… Long live Waterfall

56. So why is Agile Dead?

57. We completely missed the purpose
People usually mistake Agile with Scrum:
- Scrum is just a practice (e.g. Sprints, Retrospectives)... While Agile is a
mindset
The majority is just focusing on the Process and not on the Output and the
Outcome
We are missing the “Whys”

58. We completely missed the purpose
Developers aren't happy
Customers aren’t happy
Product aren’t happy
Stakeholders aren’t happy
We struggle to deliver value to our customers
No execs/c-levels understands the metrics usually provided

59. We completely missed the purpose
Developers aren't happy
Customers aren’t happy
Product aren’t happy
Stakeholders aren’t happy
We struggle to deliver value to our customers
No execs/c-levels understands the metrics usually provided
Remember: We are
uncovering better
ways of developing
software...

60. What are we measuring anyway?

61. What are we measuring anyway?
8º
12º
20º
21º
22º
23º

62. How many changes have you seen lately
On your processes?
On your practice?
On your values and principles?
On your mindset?

63. Which makes me wonder
Why are most of the companies so rigid with their Agile practices?
Where is the agility? Or are we agile regarding everything except Agile itself?

64. Popcorn Time Flow for Experimentation
Claudio Perrone

65. Do you believe Scrum is enough?

66. Do you believe Scrum is enough?

67. Do you believe Scrum is enough?

68. Do you believe Scrum is enough?
Agile

69. Do you believe Scrum is enough?
Scrum
Agile

70. At the end of the day
Who cares if we are doing sprints... If we don't get anything done?
Don’t forget that the purpose is to deliver software… not to do Scrum, sprints or to
blindly follow a process

71. What about certifications?
Who here holds a CSD/CSM/CSPO Scrum Alliance’s certification?
It just means that you or your company had around £1000 to pay for a two or three
days training
Even the lowest-cost Scrum Alliance course brings its instructor from $3000 to
$5000, which is a pretty decent pay for two or three days’ work
Controversy in the community

72. What about scaling?
Frameworks like silver bullets
Controversy in the community

73. How many Agile experts?
Agile Coaches on my LinkedIn > 21,050 results
Scrum Masters on my LinkedIn > 919,508 results
Controversy in the community

74. So what is NOT the goal of Agile?
- Self promotion
- Fat bank accounts
- Bullshit
- Micromanagement
- Dogma
- Religion
- Silver Bullet
- Fad
- Trend
- ...

75. So what is the goal of Agile?
To have Happy:
- Customers
- Developers
- Stakeholders
- Executives
- C-Levels
- ...

76. Let’s go back to the beginning…

77. …and start with “Individuals and interactions”
We have a lot to learn with machines... Just go back to 1981 and take a look at
the Robustness principle (or Postel's law) regarding TCP implementations

78. Thank you!
AGILE