As I am sure you are well aware, companies have been purging themselves of what they now perceive to be niche roles not directly tied to the bottom line.
For the last years, I’ve seen a lot of criticism around Agile, but this is the first time somebody really understands Agile before criticising it. Awesome reflection.
as always, your view mirrors my work life so faithfully that it is moving. Looking at organizations from a sociological point of view is a novelty to me but it feels both refreshing and reassuring
Thank you, Charles, for both drawing into conscious awareness that which has been swirling around us for a while, and inspiring me to go and write about this mess myself... 👏
Excellent points, as always, Charles. I think there are some underlying factors you are hitting on: a lack of trust leaders have for their teams to have authority. Just like they want the consultants to make them look good, they don't want their teams to make them look bad. Suppose there is no trust in the individual contributors in an organization. In that case, research, authority to the team, or value described by anyone other than the leader is irrelevant in decision-making. Trust and cultural issues must be fixed in organizations where this occurs before that organization can succeed, regardless of agile or AI (the thing most lacking trust). Otherwise, it is like trying to cure cancer in a patient that has heart disease. The cancer cure isn't the problem.
I think Agile works well to create new things. When you are starting from scratch it's tremendously powerful to create working software quickly and iterate on it. It's exciting for everyone involved!
But it gets harder and harder to maintain or improve existing software, there's less excitement, more bugs have to get incorporated into sprints or iterations or whatever you call them. Each release is going to be less and less impactful for users. Technical debt starts to add up and slow everything down. Regression issues become a massive challenge. The lack of focus on documentation in those early stages creates huge barriers to onboarding new people.
What I've observed is that fewer companies are willing to tear things up to rebuild, because they've already invested in the development of what they have now. There's not obvious return for starting over when your software works...mostly. Lots of more mature organizations are waiting for the AI dust to settle before they commit to any major overhaul. Why would you need a dedicated scrum master when your developers work on bug fixes and tiny new features that take forever to implement?
For the last years, I’ve seen a lot of criticism around Agile, but this is the first time somebody really understands Agile before criticising it. Awesome reflection.
as always, your view mirrors my work life so faithfully that it is moving. Looking at organizations from a sociological point of view is a novelty to me but it feels both refreshing and reassuring
Thank you Federico
Thank you, Charles, for both drawing into conscious awareness that which has been swirling around us for a while, and inspiring me to go and write about this mess myself... 👏
You're welcome. Send me what you write!
Excellent points, as always, Charles. I think there are some underlying factors you are hitting on: a lack of trust leaders have for their teams to have authority. Just like they want the consultants to make them look good, they don't want their teams to make them look bad. Suppose there is no trust in the individual contributors in an organization. In that case, research, authority to the team, or value described by anyone other than the leader is irrelevant in decision-making. Trust and cultural issues must be fixed in organizations where this occurs before that organization can succeed, regardless of agile or AI (the thing most lacking trust). Otherwise, it is like trying to cure cancer in a patient that has heart disease. The cancer cure isn't the problem.
I think Agile works well to create new things. When you are starting from scratch it's tremendously powerful to create working software quickly and iterate on it. It's exciting for everyone involved!
But it gets harder and harder to maintain or improve existing software, there's less excitement, more bugs have to get incorporated into sprints or iterations or whatever you call them. Each release is going to be less and less impactful for users. Technical debt starts to add up and slow everything down. Regression issues become a massive challenge. The lack of focus on documentation in those early stages creates huge barriers to onboarding new people.
What I've observed is that fewer companies are willing to tear things up to rebuild, because they've already invested in the development of what they have now. There's not obvious return for starting over when your software works...mostly. Lots of more mature organizations are waiting for the AI dust to settle before they commit to any major overhaul. Why would you need a dedicated scrum master when your developers work on bug fixes and tiny new features that take forever to implement?
I don't want to favorite this, because I think there's a lot of brutal truth to it. Hmm...
So you feel conflicted?
Thank you my friend