I Quit Being an Agile Coach and Maybe You Should Too Johannes - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

I Quit Being an Agile Coach and Maybe You Should Too Johannes Link business@johanneslink.net @johanneslink

Preamble: What Agile? • Generic definition: Start with something, measure, do a retrospective, change something small, iterate • More concrete definition: Choose your preferable set of rules, practices & heuristics from XP, Scrum, Lean, Kanban etc. - start with (sub)set - then iterate while applying the rules

Placebo? Adverse Reactions! Partial blindness Johannes Link Agile Salesman business@johanneslink.net

Agile is like homeopathy We don't really know if the practices work mostly context- independent In fact, we have lots of empirical clues that it does not

"After praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for two months my lottery ticket finally hit the jackpot. You should worship FSM, too!" Does Praying work?

"That is basic competence. [...] there’s a formula for it and everything. [...] It takes about 2 months to see initial results and 2 years before we get to 1 bug per 100 dev-days, but we get there." http://arlobelshee.com/post/ scaling-agile-the-easy-way Does Agile work?

"After taking 4 [sugar] pills 3 times a day for one week my headache had vanished for good" Does Homeopathy work?

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Evidence-based Medicine "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions" (Wikipedia) as opposed to "experience-based" clinical trials are main means of evidence

Some Principles for Meaningful Clinical Trials • Randomized • Triple blind • Adequate study group ‣ In number ‣ In profile • Choose the real endpoints

Software Engineering experiments usually cannot obey a single principle • Number of participants • Real world projects and teams • Real endpoints • Blindness of participants

Agile is VERY sensitive to context effects • Management acknowledges the need for change and supports it • A team is allowed to use new technology • A team is relieved from bureaucratic annoyances • A team attracts the good developers • A coach brings in missing technological expertise

Controlled Experiments are not the answer "Software development will not usefully be studied with such an approach. It needs to be studied with tools that borrow as much from the social and cognitive sciences as they do from the mathematical theories of computation." L. Bossavit in The Leprechauns of Software Engineering

Agile treatment produces adverse reactions There are plenty of reasons why going fully Agile might not be in the best interest of companies, teams and individuals Whatever you change, some people will be worse off

We create an Agile Utopia "Of a republic's best state and of the new island Utopia" Thomas More (1516)

We create an Agile Dystopia Those who love it will either leave or be disillusioned Those who hate it will either leave or sabotage Those who don't care will go on not caring

More harm you can do by trying to introduce (too much) Agile • Important customers might go somewhere else • Diminished productivity might lead to diminished sales • The late status quo might be gone for good

"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." W. Edwards Deming

Valid reasons for companies not to change • Our current business model works (more or less) • We are experts in what we do now • We have tried similar things that did not work • Our culture fits our current process • This is not the right time

Valid reasons for people not to change • I like it the way it is NOW • Our current way works reasonably well • I cannot do it • The intended new way does not fit me • I know more about the problem than you • I have more important problems to deal with • I'm scared

Focusing on Agile will distort your view Thinking within the solution space makes you ignore many important clues and alternative ideas

We overestimate the benefit of our own area of expertise Studies with medical specialists show that they value their own therapies several times higher than their colleagues from other specialities do

"Un-agile" practices do also work • There are (many) successful distributed teams • Sometimes code reviews work and pair programming doesn't • High quality software with little or no test automation exists • Component teams can also deliver • Some projects are quite successful using a top-down design approach

It's not your job ... to sell necessity of change to employees ... to fire someone ... to fix problems in a rush which have piled up for years

Coming in with the fixed label "Agile" can diminish your chances of success Many people oppose ready-made solutions The Nocebo effect: Adverse reactions without real treatment

Sometimes marketing will make you want the opposite

Sometimes you don't need a vacuum cleaner http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3511327191/in/ photolist-6mhteZ-7JeGLv-6SG5kt-7GFMx5-7JiCeE-dCsbzo/

What should you do?

Step 1: Get rid of "Agile" on your business card Find a new title Maybe you don't need one?

Step 2: Become a problem solver ... instead of a solution provider Collect all tools that could be useful one day

Step 3: Put your skin in the game Information is asymmetric Risk should be symmetric

Code of Hammurabi "If a builder builds a house and the house collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death."

How to put skin into the software game • Be the first consumer of your product • Never teach or advise something that you either haven't done yourself before or wouldn't do if you were in your students' or clients' shoes • Become an employee • Attach compensation to your client's long- term satisfaction

Why you might not want to follow my advice • No more clients which pay you for ‣ Agile Introduction ‣ Scrum Training ‣ Certification

What I (re-)read during prep in no particular order • N. Taleb: Antifragile • B. Goldacre: Bad Pharma • G. M. Weinberg: The Secrets of Consulting • L. Bossavit: The Leprechauns of Software Engineering • A. Oram, G. Wilson: Making Software • N. Taleb, C. Sandis: The Skin In The Game Heuristic for Protection Against Tail Events • Christian Weymayr: Die Homöopathie-Lüge • http://newtechusa.net/agile/deviation/ • http://martinfowler.com/articles/agileFluency.html • O. Maasen, C. Matts, C. Geary: Commitment • Richard Feynman: Cargo Cult Science