6 Things Developers Hate about Agile
Either you love or hate agile development, it’s sure to live on. Though agile comes with many benefits – including increased stakeholder engagement, transparency, early delivery, improved quality, focus on users and business value – but there are still things developers hate about it.
#1. Thinking Agile is a silver bullet that will solve all your problems
When agile became a buzz word, lots of companies decided to adopt it and its every ever-existed framework. But as a result, many of them forgot the real meaning of agile.
The truth is that popular agile “brands” – Scrum, Kanban, Extreme programming, Pair programming and many others – may help you create better products. Or they may not. That’s why, instead of mindlessly following another “agile brand”, experiment, try new things, review and make changes that will let you deliver better products.
#2. Saying you’re “agile” just because you’re doing daily standups
Though the practice of daily standups definitely has some value, agile is much more than this. But just because you arrange a 15-minute meeting on a daily basis, it doesn’t mean you’re agile.
#3. Saying you’re agile when you’re definitely not
You might be doing the major agile methodology practices, but if you don’t understand the key agile practices and your team lacks flexibility, openness, collaboration, team spirit and doesn’t focus on quality and customer needs, then you’re not agile.
#4. Arguing about the difference between Agile and agile
It gets on many developers’ nerves when the so-called “agilists” have smart-aleck talks about the difference between the big A (Agile) and small a (agile). In fact, the only difference you should worry about is the difference between being agile and doing agile.
It’s not enough just to ‘do agile’ (aka follow agile practices – iterations, stand-ups, user stories, etc). ‘Being agile’ goes far deeper than that – it’s about our mindset and organisational culture; it’s about what we value and how we behave.
#5. Blaming agile if you tried it once and failed
Any project may succeed or fail, even if you’re using agile methods. You need to understand that agile is not a silver bullet, so if something went wrong, don’t blame the process – how effectively it’s used depends on decision-makers, not on the approach itself. After all, agile is just another tool, and if it doesn’t work for you, pick another.
6. Using agile as an excuse for having no documentation
This is a popular misconception of agile practitioners that the project can be delivered more quickly and easily by avoiding documentation. But agile is not an excuse for skipping documentation!
Documentation is important in agile projects, though it is often more focused and condensed. The level of documentation needs to be appropriate to the particular project you are working on and the level of maturity of the team.
Is there anything to add? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
