| I think I understand your frustration, and I agree to a certain extent. But first, consider this: Could it be that your problem isn't with Agile itself but with Scrum (i.e. how you apply Agile)? In my experience, it goes something like this; – "We need a better way to work" – "Oh, let's go with Agile, everyone is doing that" – "But that's just a set of principles and guidelines though isn't it?" – "So we need something on top of it then. To keep track of what we're doing and what we've done? And how fast we've done it. How fast we can deliver things. We have to measure the throughput of the features we ship. Oh and we need status tags so that we know which state every feature is in at any given time. And the features are too big of course, we need to split them into smaller \"tasks\", and they need to contain exactly the information required to complete the work without talking to anyone else. I mean I'm a manager and simply must know what people are working on and how they're solving it and, if they're not doing it fast enough. Right?" – "Sounds good, how do we keep track of the way we keep track of things?" – "Hmmmm....." – "Oh wait! Meetings and ceremonies!!" If you cannot succeed in a situation where you have motivated people, in an environment where learning by failure is encouraged and management that trust their workers I don't think you can blame Agile. But you could perhaps blame the framework that you execute Agile with because they have a way of demotivating even the best of us. In a perfect world (where you're all in the same room all the time) the Agile manifesto and the development principles it comes with, a whiteboard and post-its will be all you need. Your problem is what you've replaced the whiteboard and post-its with. I could of course be wrong here but this is, in my experience what breaks the camels back. Mostly... |