Agile is Dead :: Viana Tech Meetups 2018

1. Agile is Dead
by Pedro Gustavo Torres
Viana do Castelo 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
The “Plano de Pormenor do Centro
Histórico” (PPCHVC) of Viana do
Castelo is approved with the decision
to demolish the “Prédio Coutinho”
The Agile movement started (with the
Manifesto)
1995
Fernando Pereira founded the “Alto
Minho” newspaper
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
Backlog

13. How does this fits together?
Agile Onion

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

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

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

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

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

19. Agile Implementations

20. Beware of the Cargo Cult

21. Beware of the Cargo Cult

22. Stop adopting the Spotify Model
By Marcin Floryan (team catalyst supporting engineers at Spotify aka Engineering Manager)

23. What is the current adoption of Agile?
97% of adoption?

24. What is the current adoption of Agile? [Increased? ]
97% of adoption?

25. I find it hard to believe

26. Or you are lucky enough to born Agile…

27. …and this looks like your workplace

28. Or you’ll need to go through an Agile transformation...

29. …and this looks like your workplace…

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

31. Typical Agile opposing force…
CEO
Manager
Manager Manager
Dev Dev Dev Dev Dev

32. Typical Agile opposing force…
CEO
Manager
Manager
Manager
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev

33. …Managers!

34. Just because they are afraid off losing power!

35. Just because they are afraid off losing power!
Power
Agile is

36. Questionable Agile
Bad Agile
Crappy Agile
frAgile
Dark Scrum

37. 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

38. 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

39. 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

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

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

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

43. 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?

44. 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

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

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

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

48. 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
burndown graphs need to “look good”.

49. 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
burndown graphs need to “look good”.
1. Psychological safety
The five keys to a successful Google team

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

51. 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?

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

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

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

55. 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? If you get any at all…

56. Right Bad Side Agile
Agile experts/gurus/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”

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

58. 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

59. eXtreme Programming “belongs” to Agile

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

61. So why is Agile Dead?

62. We completely missed the purpose
People usually mistake Agile with SCRUM 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”

63. 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

64. 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...

65. What are we measuring anyway?

66. What are we measuring anyway?
8 º
1 2 º

67. What are we measuring anyway? [We are improving! ]
8 º
1 2 º
1 º
2 º

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

69. 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?

70. Popcorn Time Flow for Experimentation
Claudio Perrone

71. Do you believe Scrum is enough?

72. Do you believe Scrum is enough?

73. Do you believe Scrum is enough?

74. Do you believe Scrum is enough?
Agile

75. Do you believe Scrum is enough?
Scrum
Agile

76. 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

77. 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

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

79. Agnostic Agile?
The need to create more manifestos
Controversy in the community

80. McKinsey, Deloitte, Accenture, Gartner, HBR?
Agile is becoming a business... And “No-one ever got fired for choosing IBM"…
Controversy in the community

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

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

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

84. Let’s go back to the beginning…

85. …look to RFC 761 Transmission Control Protocol…
(…)

86. …look to RFC 761 Transmission Control Protocol…
(…)

87. …and apply it to “Individuals and interactions”

88. Thank you!
AGILE