This document discusses how agile practices can break down in very large organizations. It describes a scenario where an agile team grew from 4 people to 70 people working on the same application across 3 teams. Over time, their agile practices like 1-hour planning meetings, continuous delivery, and user testing broke down. The document warns against "cargo culting" agile practices and getting bogged down in "bike shedding" over small decisions. It recommends staying focused on learning, shipping frequently in small batches, testing assumptions, sitting with product managers and designers, getting out of the building to test with users, letting go of small things, and asking "why".

1. © Copyright 2017 Pivotal Software, Inc. All rights Reserved. Version 1.0
Agile: The Bad Parts
Matthew Parker / @moonmaster9000
Martina Hodges-Schell / @polaroidgrrl

2. Once upon an
engagement…

3. VLO

4. Very
Large
Organization

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4 of us
4 of them
Collocated
Paired

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Developers
practiced pairing
and TDD

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Designers would
prototype ideas
and test them on
users

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1 hour of planning
each week

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1 hour of reflection
each week

10. Released a
small MVP to
millions of
users

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The team went
from 8 to 70

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The application
hadn’t really
changed much

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Though there were
three teams now
building it

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There were scrum
masters,
consultants, and
contractors
everywhere

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Continuous
delivery had been
replaced with 8
week sprints

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1-hour planning
meetings had
turned into
multi-day planning
conferences

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The product
managers of each
team struggled to
agree

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They constantly
debated over tiny
inconsequential
decisions

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The teams no
longer talked to
users

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They hired
someone to keep
the prototype in
sync with the real
application (?!?!?!?!)

22. So what went wrong?

29. Cargo
Culting

32. Bike
Shedding

33. So what went wrong?

34. They cargo-culted the prototype
What went wrong?

35. They bike shedded tiny
decisions
What went wrong?

36. They “scaled”
What went wrong?

37. They change their process,
not their mindset
What else can go wrong?

38. Success breeds change… and
change can feel threatening...
What else can go wrong?

39. They focus on engineering, and
forget the users and the
business
What else can go wrong?

40. Key takeaways

41. Agile is about learning

42. Ship smaller batches more
frequently

43. Test Assumptions

44. What Can I do?

45. Sit next to your product managers
and designers
Something simple you could do to ship more frequently:

46. GTFO of the building
Something simple you could do to test assumptions:

47. Let go of the little things
More suggestions:

48. Ask “why”
More suggestions:

49. Do The Right Thing
Do What Works
Be Kind

50. Thank you!

51. Transforming How The World Builds Software
© Copyright 2017 Pivotal Software, Inc. All rights Reserved.