Agile is still dead :: Portugal - Brasil 2020 (Café com Rey)

1. Agile is Dead
by Pedro Gustavo Torres
Portugal - Brasil 2020
still

2. I started in 2017 saying that Agile was Dead

3. Hello!
I am Pedro Torres
● Director of Software Engineering @ Salsify
● 12+ years experience running engineering
teams (100+ engineers)
● Love to help Startups, Scaleups, and Blue
chip companies succeed

4. pedrogustavotorres
_pedro_torres
pedrogustavotorres
pedrogustavotorres.com
pedro.gustavo.torres@gmail.com

5. Agile and Scrum were “invented” a long time ago

6. Agile and Scrum were “invented” a long time ago

7. Agile and Scrum were “invented” a long time ago
2001
● Brazil lost against Honduras in
Copa America in the quarterfinals
● The Agile movement started (with
the Manifesto)
1995
● Ronaldo Nazário was Eredivisie’s
top scorer playing for PSV
Eindhoven
● Scrum was announced by Ken
Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland

8. People talk about it like if it was something new
● But it is not!

9. So what is Agile?
● “Ability to deliver early value to your customers”

10. So what is Agile?
● “Ability to deliver early value to your customers”

11. And Scrum?
● Scrum is a framework based on empiricism: inspection, adaption and
transparency
Backlog

12. How does this fits together?
● Agile Onion

13. How does this fits together?
JIRA, Daily Standups...
● Agile Onion

14. How does this fits together?
JIRA, Daily Standups...
Scrum, XP...
● Agile Onion

15. How does this fits together?
Scrum, XP...
Behaviour
JIRA, Daily Standups...
● Agile Onion

16. How does this fits together?
Scrum, XP...
Agility
Behaviour
JIRA, Daily Standups...
● Agile Onion

17. A picture is worth one thousand words...
Tools & Processes, Practices
Principles, Values, Mindset

18. Agile Implementations

19. Beware of the Cargo Cult

20. Stop adopting the Spotify Model
By Marcin Floryan (team catalyst supporting engineers at Spotify aka Engineering Manager)

21. There is no Copy and Paste solution

22. What Agile looks like when properly established

23. What Agile looks like in a typical transformation

24. What Agile looks like in a transformation
Yep! You guessed it. This is Agile right here

25. Do companies what to be “Agile” because they want to

26. …or just to be able to say: “We’re Agile!” ?

27. Implementing Agile is not easy
CEO
Manager
Manager Manager
Dev Dev Dev Dev Dev

28. Implementing Agile is not easy
CEO
Manager
Manager
Manager
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev
Dev

29. And usually because of Middle Managers!

30. Just because they are afraid off losing power!

31. Just because they are afraid off losing power!
Power
Agile is

32. So no wonder we have “Questionable Agile”
Bad Agile
Crappy Agile
frAgile
Dark Scrum

33. Let’s look again to the manifesto
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change over Following a Plan

34. Let’s look again to the manifesto
“Left” Side Agile “Right” Side Agile
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change over Following a Plan

35. Let’s look again to the manifesto
“Left” Good Side Agile “Right” Bad Side Agile
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation
Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation
Responding to Change over Following a Plan
Bad Agile
Crappy Agile
frAgile
Dark Scrum

36. Bad Side Agile (some examples)
1. Dedicated QA Team
2. Not having burndown charts (or having “flat” charts)
3. Not having CI/CD pipelines or other XP practices
4. Depending too much on JIRA (or similar tools)
5. Too many dependencies between teams
6. Too big teams (ignoring Amazon’s “two pizza rule”)
7. Teams not doing DevOps (e.g. not supporting systems in Production, not doing on-call)
8. Teams without Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose (the pillars of intrinsic motication)
9. Not having Pschycological safety (that is one of the five keys to a successful Google team)
10. Not tracking the improvements of a team (e.g. deployments frequency, lead time)
11. Use “empty” metrics (e.g. velocity, committed vs delivered) to track progress or to compare teams

37. So why is Agile Dead?

38. I believe we completely missed the purpose
● People usually mistake Agile with SCRUM Scrum:
- Scrum is just a practice (e.g. Sprints, Retrospectives)... While Agile is a
mindset
● The majority is just focusing on the Process and not on the Output and the
Outcome
● We are missing the “Whys”

39. And the proof is the unhappiness of everyone
● Developers aren't happy
● Customers aren’t happy
● Product aren’t happy
● Stakeholders aren’t happy
● We struggle to deliver value to our customers
● No Execs/C-Levels understands the metrics usually provided

40. And the proof is the unhappiness of everyone
● Developers aren't happy
● Customers aren’t happy
● Product aren’t happy
● Stakeholders aren’t happy
● We struggle to deliver value to our customers
● No Execs/C-Levels understands the metrics usually provided
Remember: We are
uncovering better
ways of developing
software...

41. And let’s face it, are you really improving?
● Your processes?
● Your practices?
● Your values and principles?
● Your mindset?

42. Which makes me wonder why is that?
● Why are most of the companies so rigid with their Agile practices?
● Where is the agility? Or are we agile regarding everything except Agile itself?

43. Because, at the end of the day, we just want stuff done
● Who cares if we are doing sprints... If we don't get anything done?
● Don’t forget that the purpose is to deliver software… not to do Scrum, sprints or
to blindly follow a process

44. What about orgs?

45. What about certifications?
● Who here holds a CSD/CSM/CSPO Scrum Alliance’s certification?
● It just means that you (or someone) had money to pay for a two or three days
training
● Even the lowest-cost Scrum Alliance course brings its instructor a pretty decent
pay for two or three days’ work

46. What about Kanban vs Scrum?

47. What about scaling?
● Frameworks like silver bullets

48. What about scaling?
● Frameworks like silver bullets

49. What about Agnostic Agile?
● Do we need to create more manifestos?

50. What about the “fathers” of Agile?

51. What about McKinsey, Deloitte, and Accentures of this life?
● Agile is becoming a (very appealing) business... And “No-one ever got fired for
choosing IBM”

52. What about the Agile “experts”?

53. So what is NOT the goal of Agile?
● Self promotion
● Fat bank accounts
● Bullshit
● Micromanagement
● Dogma
● Religion
● Silver Bullet
● Fad
● Trend
● ...

54. And what is the goal of Agile?
To have Happy:
● Customers
● Developers
● Stakeholders
● Executives
● C-Levels
● ...

55. So let’s go back to the beginning…

56. And look to RFC 761 Transmission Control Protocol
(…)

57. More specifically to the “Robustness Principle”
(…)

58. Apply it to “Individuals and interactions”

59. And see if we can make a U-turn on Agile’s direction

60. Thank you!
AGILE