I Quit Being an Agile Coach and Maybe You Should Too Johannes - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
I Quit Being an Agile Coach and Maybe You Should Too Johannes Link business@johanneslink.net @johanneslink Preamble: What Agile? Generic definition: Start with something, measure, do a retrospective, change something small, iterate
I Quit Being an Agile Coach and Maybe You Should Too
Johannes Link
business@johanneslink.net @johanneslink
Preamble: What Agile?
measure, do a retrospective, change something small, iterate
preferable set of rules, practices & heuristics from XP, Scrum, Lean, Kanban
applying the rules
Placebo? Adverse Reactions! Partial blindness
Johannes Link
Agile Salesman
business@johanneslink.net
We don't really know if the practices work mostly context- independent
In fact, we have lots of empirical clues that it does not
"After praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for two months my lottery ticket finally hit the jackpot. You should worship FSM, too!"
Does Praying work?
"That is basic competence. [...] there’s a formula for it and everything. [...] It takes about 2 months to see initial results and 2 years before we get to 1 bug per 100 dev-days, but we get there."
http://arlobelshee.com/post/ scaling-agile-the-easy-way
Does Agile work?
"After taking 4 [sugar] pills 3 times a day for one week my headache had vanished for good"
Does Homeopathy work?
"the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions" (Wikipedia)
as opposed to "experience-based" clinical trials are main means of evidence
Some Principles for Meaningful Clinical Trials
Software Engineering experiments usually cannot obey a single principle
Agile is VERY sensitive to context effects
change and supports it
annoyances
technological expertise
"Software development will not usefully be studied with such an
tools that borrow as much from the social and cognitive sciences as they do from the mathematical theories of computation."
The Leprechauns of Software Engineering
Controlled Experiments are not the answer
Agile treatment produces adverse reactions
There are plenty of reasons why going fully Agile might not be in the best interest of companies, teams and individuals
Whatever you change, some people will be worse off
We create an Agile Utopia
"Of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia" Thomas More (1516)
We create an Agile Dystopia
Those who love it will either leave
Those who hate it will either leave
Those who don't care will go on not caring
More harm you can do by trying to introduce (too much) Agile
somewhere else
diminished sales
good
"It is not necessary to
mandatory."
Valid reasons for companies not to change
(more or less)
did not work
Valid reasons for people not to change
to deal with
Thinking within the solution space makes you ignore many important clues and alternative ideas
We overestimate the benefit
Studies with medical specialists show that they value their own therapies several times higher than their colleagues from other specialities do
"Un-agile" practices do also work
programming doesn't
automation exists
design approach
... to sell necessity of change to
employees
... to fire someone ... to fix problems in a rush which
have piled up for years
Coming in with the fixed label "Agile" can diminish your chances of success
Many people oppose ready-made solutions
The Nocebo effect: Adverse reactions without real treatment
Sometimes marketing will make you want the opposite
http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3511327191/in/ photolist-6mhteZ-7JeGLv-6SG5kt-7GFMx5-7JiCeE-dCsbzo/
What should you do?
Step 1: Get rid of "Agile" on your business card
Find a new title
Maybe you don't need one?
Step 2: Become a problem solver
... instead of a solution provider Collect all tools that could be useful one day
Information is asymmetric Risk should be symmetric
Step 3: Put your skin in the game
"If a builder builds a house and the house collapses and causes the death of the
that builder shall be put to death."
How to put skin into the software game
either haven't done yourself before or wouldn't do if you were in your students'
term satisfaction
Why you might not want to follow my advice
What I (re-)read during prep
in no particular order
Protection Against Tail Events