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Another kind of cult is religious adherence to methodology while ruining the very value the methodology is supposed to enhance. When you think something is stupid (like adopting only standups), frequently it's because you don't understand the motivation behind it. Standups are one of the first obvious changes any team, no matter how oldschool and rigid, can adopt and see the results behind it quickly, to encourage further transformation. When you're changing something big (like a development process that is stable, consistent and filled with people, resources, operational and deployment plans, etc.), you want to change it either radically, or chunk by chunk. Radical changes are easy to decide yet hard to pull off while preserving business continuity, it's a bit of a gamble not everybody is willing to take. So, many executives want the "transformation" to actually be "step by step evolution". And one of the first steps are standups and enhancing the planning. All of the above doesn't debate the fact that there are companies which get Agile terribly wrong, and companies which can't get Agile right due to extremely rigid structure. However, not all companies who fail to visibly transform into Agile in a few easy steps are like that: sometimes they're stuck on early iterations, slowly working their ways further while preserving continuity and market momentum, and there's nothing wrong with it. |
I was sick of "circle time" and "show and tell" when I was in kindergarten. I don't need to deal with that as an adult when I have work to do.