(2017-05-13) Kelly Why Do Devs Hate Agile

Allan Kelly: Why do devs hate Agile? I was inspired by Jim McCarthy’s book Dynamics of Software Development. Jim was a developer, albeit a developer who had started managing other developers. It was that book that made me think “alternative ways are valid.

In the beginning Agile was a bottom up movement. Now it is a top-down movement, change is imposed on people rather than people wanting to change.

Management thinking needs to change too – start with Software Development is Upside Down 2016-11-13-KellySoftwareDevelopmentIsUpsideDown

Reason #1: Agile is now an imposed change.

In my experience developers want to work Agile because true Agile allows them – no, demands – they do a quality job.

Namely “technical practices from XP”, specifically: simple design, relentless refactoring, test driven development (plus behaviour driven development), pair programming and things like face-to-face conversations and “story is a placeholder for a conversation.”

I’ll point the finger specifically at Scrum, and later Kanban, for not mandating these practices – something I did with Xanpan.

Without these practices teams are driven harder to deliver something sooner and quality drops.

Reason #2: Agile without technical quality makes developers lives worse.

The Agile toolset is intended to help teams organize themselves, it is intended to make problems visible so they can be addressed and fixed. In the hands of people with the right attitude this is brilliant.

Teams don’t need a manager (although one may still be useful). Teams can see problems. And teams can fix problems.

But… the very same tools used by someone with the wrong attitude are a micro-managers dream.

Reason #3: In the wrong hands the same Agile tools are very effective micromanagement tools.