urban legends from the land of agile

Agile is being positioned as a magic potion to weed out all corporate inefficiencies. People have seemingly bought the idea that implementing Agile and following its best practices will start boosting their bottomlines positively. However, implementing Agile is a marathon, not a sprint. Peddling this as a “snake oil” is fraught with danger, and doing a disservice both to adopters & practitioners of Agile. A lot of Agilists believe that Agile simply involves cutting up work into sprints, removing documentation, having daily standups, and doing a fact check at the end of each sprint, is enough to complete software development & deliver it. Nothing could be farther from the truth. On the other hand, baiters of Agile say that there is no “senior” to manage such projects, so tracking of progress is impossible, and that it does not work with large enterprise scale projects or teams. According to them, Agile cannot even promise the delivery of the predefined work on a fixed date, because it does not work on fixed scope. Again, they are missing the forest for the trees. Such urban legends & misconceptions are harming Agile and preventing the unlocking of real value. The aim of this stage is to list & discuss various urban myths that have been propagated by Agile opponents and also proponents. Agile isn’t and has never been the point, getting better & delivering value have been the keys all along. Learn why Agile frequently fails because of the aforementioned myths, and discuss real world solutions teams have implemented to deliver & better themselves.