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Rising Star
Big shout out to Excel...
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Used properly, it can be incredibly effective and efficient. Use it on the wrong project or with a program not committed to the process, and you’re setting yourself up for...
A change order. 🙃
🤣🤣
MAKE WATERFALL GREAT AGAIN!!!
Chief
Too soon @PWC.... too soon.
Agile is a just a way to micro manage the team
Thanks for your views
Scaled Agile is the most convoluted, bloated, money generating and chaotic thing to do to a client.
PS1 - I don’t disagree with you. I think there are too many points of failure, those at a “higher” layer think that the teams report to them and that they have authority all the way down. The ambition of SAFe is good but the way it’s implemented and runs is... well I’m waiting to see it go well for 1 org but I haven’t after seeing it in action quite a few times.
Sounds like a lot of people don’t find it useful because they aren’t doing it right
^^^^
Most consulting firms don’t apply true agile, especially those in the public sector.
Don’t do it at a consulting firm. That’s the best advice I can give you.
I agree 100% EY 4. These consulting firms are just selling the word but nothing they do is true agile.
I’ve had a client suggest using agile to build a warehouse. I told them to do it waterfall. They told me “no, it’s a warehouse” 😆
Hahaha! 😂
Chief
Depends on the environment but my method is to look at it strictly as an iterative development effort. I cut whatever I think sucks out and typically just keep daily meetings and retrospectives. Planning is done in like 30 minutes and is super rough cut. I, unless it doesn’t make sense, or someone wants in, shield the team from everything else. Keep everything 100% transparent intra-team and as opaque and detached as possible externally(outside of statuses, etc) it seems to work.
Chief
If you tell them to kick rocks but deliver they will leave you alone, in my experience. It’s a delicate dance. I genuinely want our team to be (mostly) a black box where they give us what we need and we produce work. I know it makes the team happier and I think more productive, henerally
It’s a scam that is used to sell work by sounding cutting edge and to confuse clients so you can doge questions by creating confusing processes.
I used to try to fight it but now I see the power. “Oh I didn’t do something well that’s because it’s in the sprint but needs to go to dev complete before it can go to testing but now that you see a bug I put it in the backlog....I can do it next week when the next sprint starts”
I love this response and have actually experienced it. LoL
Clients ask for it without knowing what it is. Firms “use” it without having enough budget to run it properly as it was intended.
Replace “use” with sell and you nailed it
Chief
Empower the individual teams to make decisions and own how they will work to meet KPIs. Otherwise you’ll just end up hiding waterfall in agile language.
It seems the problem lies in “fake agile” which is often about thinking Agile = (wrong) Scrum.
Agile is just about 4 values and 12 principles. Scrum is not Agile, Kanban is not Agile.
If you want to see some improvements, learn about Agile done the right way and try to incrementally bring ideas to your team. I suggest you focus first on eliminating waste, continuous improvement, team collaboration and self-reflexion.
The biggest issue with Agile is that is often top-down. Leadership or client ask you to “do” Agile, which makes 0 sense. You should not do agile, you should be agile.
I think it’s great for SDLC projects but for others... can be very confusing
You are not 😉
It’s hard to do agile if you’re delivering to a single client who controls if you’re paid or not. At that point you’re just marching to their orders while trying to keep things as orderly as possible
Agile only really works for companies that own the product they’re delivering and have lots of customers where they can make decisions for the whole as opposed to a few very vocal customers
Yes and no. I am a product manager on the client side and many years ago I worked with a vendor team that taught me a few new things about how to be more Agile. I learned from it and stole some of their practices :). That team had a leader that eased me in to it and educated me in a good way.
I understand some clients are painful, egotistical, etc....but I would think on most clients that opportunity exists if you are good at client relationship management. If you suck at it, don't have patience, or just want to rush the product out and not try to set reasonable expectations and transparency...then yes, it is impossible.
You don’t “do agile”, you “be agile”. You can call it “agile” or “falula” or “bubba” if you want, what is important is to be a) user and business centric, b) outcome driven, c) cross functional.
If you are adhering to principles of agility, regardless of practices you adopt, you are agile.
If you think Scrum or Kanban is agile, please get educated, don’t advise clients, and get an actual agile coach on ground.
@P1, Agile is not the opposite of waterfall. This is a misconception.
And yes Agile can be a pain because you have visibility on progress and issues all the F-ing time. Waterfall is much easier on the mind once in full development mode because you dont have to worry too much about the issues or make them visible until the next phase hits you. But then the real mess starts.
“But then the real mess starts..” Thanks for highlighting the point everyone pro-agile is making.
1) Even if you believe it's snake oil no self respecting consultant will cop to telling a client agile doesn't work because it's an instant credibility killer and makes you look like a dinosaur
2)well run waterfall works well run agile works - it's the people that get shit done not the ceremonies not flippin jira and definitely not the coaches
3)beware the person that starts a statement with "in true agile" but trust the person that says when's the deadline and let's figure out what truly matters to the customer
4)the day the client values process and doing agile right more than making money begin shorting their stocks
5)blameless retrospectives are made for new agey con artists, they are weak, ineffective and passive aggressive. See point 4.
So true about #2
Pro
Well would you rather do waterfall delivery? It’s worse than Agile.
Client is key!! If they get it (actually get it), then it’s awesome. If they don’t, it’s a bad idea