The Failure of Agile, 8 Reasons Why Agile Projects Fail, Why Agile Isn't Working, there have been a lot of articles recently on the shortcomings of Agile... So maybe it's time to got back to a more traditional waterfall approach to project management? Or is it a matter of implementing Agile properly? Maybe you should use Kanban instead of SCRUM? As a Team Lead, how can you help your team succeed at Agile? Talk by Piergiuliano Bossi at TeamLeadTO meetup on 2015-12-08. See http://www.meetup.com/Toronto-Software-Team-Lead-Meetup/events/226570505/

1. Agile Pitfalls

2. We are hiring
• pgbossi@gmail.com
• @thinkingbox

3. A bit of history
• Started programming for fun in ’82, professionally
in ‘87
• Very dissatisfied dev/tech lead doing waterfall /
hacking in the 90s
• Discovered XP in ’99
• Did my first XP project in 2001 and never looked
back

4. Agile today

8. Cargo Cult

9. Feynman
“In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war
they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they
want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to
imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the
runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two
wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo
sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for
the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is
perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't
work. No airplanes land.”

10. XP

11. Forces

12. Agile Homeopathy

13. Symptoms
• Velocity used as a performance metric
• Scrum masters as project managers
• Estimates used as commitments
• Code freeze & lengthy manual QA activities

14. Made for each other?
• Change the organization.
Or change organization.
• Are you ready to let go?

15. The essence
• Self- & continuously-improving feedback loop
• Open & honest communication at all levels
• Engineering practices to support all this
Experiment & adapt!

16. Question
“I've been reading a lot about Agile and I'm
convinced my team could benefit from it. What is the
best way to introduce it to my team? Is it best to hire a
consultant? Do I need training?”
Simplicio

17. Question
“We've been using Agile at my company for a while.
At first everyone on my team was excited and it felt
like we were getting things done more quickly. But
now we seem to have lost our initial momentum and it
just feels like a bunch of process and meeting that's
not always useful and takes a lot of time. Does this
happen often? How can we get back to getting shit
done quickly?”
Pindarico

18. Question
“It is very important for my company to meet some
deadlines, is it possible to combine some of the Agile
techniques with a more waterfall approach so that we
can get the benefit of both worlds: flexibility and
predictability?”
Delirante

19. Question
“In your experience, is it ok to have the manager
being part of the SCRUM team? Or is it best to have
no hierarchy within the team?”
Scontato

20. Let’s talk