As the popularity of Agile methods have grown, so have the misconceptions or myths associated with Agile also grown. These myths get even more glorified when we talk about them in the offshore or distributed context. And to make matters worse, you can throw in a fixed-price contract spanner into the engine. Worry not! In this fun-filled activity, we'll collect facts from the participants that they believe are true and then we'll declare them as confirmed or busted after an interactive (heated) discussion.

1. Agile Mythbusters
Confirmed or Busted?
Naresh Jain
naresh@agilefaqs.com
@nashjain
http://nareshjain.com

3. 45 mins Structure
•
10 Mins - Collect and short list facts from the
participants
•
30 Mins - Trial of each fact (as many as we can
cover in 30 mins)
•
5 Mins - Declare the busted or confirmed status
against each fact

4. Commercial Break!

5. Copyright © 2012, AgileFAQs. All Rights Reserved.

6. Mumbai

10. Tech Talks!

13. 5 mins - Collect top 5
facts about Agile

14. According to the Team
•
Agile requires high discipline - True
•
It works better if all departments compliment Agile - True
•
Collocation works better - True
•
Agile = No Documentation - False (minimal documentation as
per your context)
•
Scrum of Scrum is most effective way to scale - False (its a
pretty centralised, top-down approach. There are more
distributed approaches which work better.)
•
Distributed Agile does not work due to timezone differences True (but works better than waterfall style distributed projects)

15. According to the Team…
•
Scrum in practice today is very stressful - True (most
often Scrum is mini-waterfalls and hence very stressful)
•
Velocity is killing Agility -TRUE (we seemed to have
completely missed the point of value delivery.)
•
Agile does not mean faster delivery - True (but often
leads to faster delivery as we eliminate lots of wastage)
•
Pair programming does not require two people to work
on the same task - False (two people working on the
same task is important to get the value)

16. According to the Team…
•
Agile works well in fixed-price, fixed-scope and fixed
timeline projects - False
•
Agile is 80% hype and 20% fact - True (as it stands
today, its mostly hype, as we seem to have lost the Agile
mindset and value-system.)
•
For distributed projects, proxy PO & SM is the best thing
to do - False (depends on your context.)
•
Agile Tools and Process are more important than
anything else in life - Clearly False

17. According to the Team…
•
PM is the best SM - False (PM can be a good SM if they
have the servant leadership skills.)
•
Cross skilling is difficult in Agile - False (Generalising
specialists is extremely important part of Agile)
•
In Agile, everyone is accountable = no one is
accountable - False (Agile is about team ownership and
accountability, not individual accountability. We want to
move away from heroism culture.)
•
Scrum meetings are very productive use of time - False
(ceremonies are good, but only in very limited dosage.)

18. Final Verdict!

19. Thank you!
Naresh Jain
naresh@agilefaqs.com
@nashjain
http://nareshjain.com