{"id":2105,"date":"2014-08-04T10:26:51","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T04:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2015-03-20T15:59:12","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T10:29:12","slug":"the-top-5-deterents-to-agile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/the-top-5-deterents-to-agile\/","title":{"rendered":"The Top 5 Deterents to Agile"},"content":{"rendered":"

The beauty of Agile is the fact that its just about a few principles. – which we also\u00a0summarized in a few words<\/a>. Everything else is under your control. And\u00a0on your way from classic waterfall practices\u00a0to adopting those principles, you are likely to encounter some serious blockers. I’m attempting to list out the\u00a0top 5 along with the Agile principles that they block.<\/p>\n

1. Large teams<\/h5>\n

Blocks:<\/strong> Velocity, Working together<\/p>\n

\"Scales<\/a>
Scales of Agile (Courtesy: ebizq.net)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is uncommon to have a cross-functional team of teams with 30-50 folks working on the same product. While\u00a0the Agile deliverable is a few days of work,\u00a0large teams working on a single release will generate a huge deliverable that is\u00a0more\u00a0coupled, has wider impact and\u00a0demands extensive testing.<\/p>\n

2. Fixed-scope planning<\/h5>\n

Blocks:<\/strong> Working software, Simplicity, Accepting change<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Courtesy: 352inc.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Teams that have\u00a0a fixed-scope mental\u00a0block start off by committing a scope for the next release,\u00a0and then estimate a\u00a0future release date.\u00a0Since estimates are often incorrect, the\u00a0release is delayed to deliver the committed scope – which is just not Agile. Forget about changing requirements, folks won’t even drop\u00a0a few\u00a0stories or acceptance criteria at the very end, to meet the committed date (time-box) – at the cost of breaking the promise of a few features. Even worse, that you won’t see anything working until the release is out.<\/p>\n

3. Test-automation<\/h5>\n

Blocks:<\/strong> Environment, Customer Satisfaction<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy:<\/a>
Courtesy: testdroid.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don’t think this point needs any elaboration. Haven’t we all been part of releases where the QA effort exceeds\u00a0Development just because a feature touches\u00a0multiple modules? Dependency highlighting tools can help, but a comprehensive test suite (first for the services, then for the UI) can really speed up releases.<\/p>\n

4. Team maturity, mindset & leader’s trust<\/h5>\n

Blocks:<\/strong> Motivated individuals, Self-organization, Reflection<\/p>\n

Agile is a lot about the mindset. It demands a mature, responsible team that can be trusted to self-organize. The organization also needs to trust the team and\u00a0in return\u00a0provide an environment conducive to learning & improvising all the time. If the SCRUM Reflection ceremony turns in\u00a0to a court marshal, \u00a0folks are never going to be motivated to work, let alone achieve excellence.<\/p>\n

5. Tools<\/h5>\n

Blocks<\/strong>: Excellence<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy:<\/a>
Courtesy: hubspot.net<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is truly debatable. I’ve contested, but could not convince. Everyone agrees that\u00a0you can’t\u00a0manage user stories in a\u00a0TXT file, code through versioned folders, or\u00a0test manually. Yet, we fail to accept the importance of tools to being Agile. I do not have preference for any, but I feel there has to be some lean Agile stack that lets smaller teams easily fork & merge code, mark\u00a0acceptance criteria done<\/a> (than whole stories) and validate a build in seconds.<\/p>\n

Open for discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The beauty of Agile is the fact that its just about a few principles. – which we also\u00a0summarized in a few words. Everything else is under your control. And\u00a0on your way from classic waterfall practices\u00a0to adopting those principles, you are likely to encounter some serious blockers. I’m attempting to list out the\u00a0top 5 along with … Continue reading The Top 5 Deterents to Agile<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[723],"tags":[914,918,544,132],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-being-a-product-manager","tag-agile","tag-barriers","tag-project","tag-software-engineering"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/P_IMG_20150218_090814.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prasadgupte.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}