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    Category: Antipattern

    20 Common Logical Fallacies – Don’t Be a Victim!

    Faulty thinking is part of life. We’re not perfect, nor do we think perfectly. It is, however, helpful to identify faulty thinking in our own…

    Peter 2015-03-17
    1 Comment

    Agile antipattern: Target fixation

    Have you ever been so focused on something that the rest of the world seemed to disappear for a while?  This can be great under…

    Bob Hartman 2010-05-18
    1 Comment

    Agile antipattern: Sizing or estimating bug fixes

    Is the bug to the left a large bug or a small bug?  It looks HUGE to me!  Well, in reality it is probably between…

    Bob Hartman 2010-05-05
    10 Comments

    Agile antipatterns: Agile burn-down chart roundup post

    Do you want to see several different ways agile and scrum burn-down charts can lie?  If so, you are in the right place! This month I…

    Bob Hartman 2009-12-29
    1 Comment

    Agile antipattern: Another burndown chart that lies!

    That burndown chart looks sweet doesn’t it?  The team finished the iteration on time.  What could possibly be wrong.  Well, a lot actually.  Notice that…

    Bob Hartman 2009-12-28
    2 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Changing the definition of done

    Ever see a burndown chart like the one to the left?  I’ve been on a big burndown chart kick lately and when I saw this…

    Bob Hartman 2009-12-22
    4 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Burndown “wall”

    Does your team have an iteration burndown chart (giving credit only for completed stories) look like the one to the left? If so there are a…

    Bob Hartman 2009-12-14
    9 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Burndown charts that hide the truth

    See that burndown chart over there to the left?  It looks beautiful doesn’t it?  It is an actual burndown chart with no made up data. …

    Bob Hartman 2009-12-07
    8 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Doing Agile!

    I spent the past week in Orlando, Florida  at the Agile Development Practices conference and I heard a number of people say “We do agile…

    Bob Hartman 2009-11-18
    2 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Working overtime

    Ever feel like the guy over there to the left?  Yeah, me too.  Sorry to offend some people with my language, but working overtime really…

    Bob Hartman 2009-09-22
    10 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Waiting for all the requirements before starting

    Time for a short blog entry (I tend to be way too verbose!). I often see teams trying to make sure they have all of…

    Bob Hartman 2009-07-16
    4 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Using email as the primary communication tool

    Can I just be short and to the point for this one?  I hope so, because that is my intention! Email is LOW BANDWIDTH communication…

    Bob Hartman 2009-07-08
    11 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Insanity! (5 insanity antipatterns)

    It is sometimes said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This definition has…

    Bob Hartman 2009-06-03
    0 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Treating symptoms not causes

    Agile teams often get to a point where they have a number of problems which must be addressed.  During retrospectives these items keep coming up…

    Bob Hartman 2009-05-13
    0 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Hiding unfortunate truths

    “Unfortunate truths” are things which are true – unfortunately!  I’ve heard the phrase used by defense lawyers and I have to admit it is pretty…

    Bob Hartman 2009-05-04
    0 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Comparing velocity between teams

    I recently saw an excellent blog post about iteration velocity.  Good reading in general, but the last paragraph really got my attention and is why…

    Bob Hartman 2009-04-30
    2 Comments

    Agile anti-pattern: Going to longer iterations

    This is another common theme among teams just starting with agile.  It usually goes something like this: The team has an unsuccessful iteration. They determine…

    Bob Hartman 2009-04-28
    2 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Code freezes during each iteration

    Over the past 18 months I’ve encountered a number of teams where it is standard practice to have a code freeze late in the iteration. …

    Bob Hartman 2009-04-23
    7 Comments

    Agile antipattern: Extending an iteration

    I had a previous blog post about stopping an iteration and how it was a really bad idea. Another blog post was about moving work…

    Bob Hartman 2009-04-09
    1 Comment

    Never start a sentence “We can’t be agile because…”

    I recently started filling out a form which included a question regarding the training I’ve done.  As I filled it out I realized that in…

    Bob Hartman 2009-03-23
    0 Comments
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    Forum Description

    I recently started filling out a form which included a question regarding the training I've done.  As I filled it out I realized that in the past 15 months I have trained or given presentations to over 1,000 people.  I'm sure some of those were counted two or more times for attending different events, but even if that occurred 25% of the time I've still trained over 750 people over the past 15 months.  I mention this because of those 750 people, about 700 of them are working in an agile environment or want to work in one.  Meanwhile... ... about 50 of them want to work in an agile environment and inevitably say to me "We can't be agile because <fill-in-the-blank>."  I've heard all sorts of things in the blank of that sentence.  I've heard our team is too big, our project is too big, our culture won't allow it, we work on government contracts so it isn't allowed, no one else would support agile, there aren't any training dollars to get started, blah, blah, blah.  I get a headache just thinking about all of the different excuses I've heard. I started this blog entry thinking I would go over each reason and why it wouldn't matter in the end.  While writing the last paragraph I realized I didn't want to type a 10 page, extremely boring blog entry.  So instead I want to give some advice to anyone who is tempted to start a sentence with "We can't be agile because..."

    Don't worry about what you can't do figure out things you CAN do! For example, can you:

    1. Prioritize work into a product backlog so the highest value items get completed first rather than the easiest items being cherry-picked?
    2. Stop every 2 weeks and give a demo of current functionality to determine if any changes need to be made?
    3. Meet for 15 minutes each morning to ascertain how things are going and if any help can be provided by one team member to another?
    If you are still stuck, then another piece of advice is often useful:

    What can the team do on their own? (without changing things for others) You don't necessarily have to do ALL of a particular agile process or all of the agile related engineering practices in order to improve your results!   As your results improve the organization will notice.  When the organization notices, one of two things will happen: a) they leave you alone and say keep doing what you are doing, or b) they will try to do the same thing on a larger scale in the rest of organization.  I've never seen a reasonable organization shut down a team using agile where it wasn't really "allowed" (although I have seen it done when the organization was not "reasonable").  Instead most of them try to figure out how to allow it without hurting other parts of the organizations.  Every once in a while, and happening with more frequency now, they decide to take a plunge into the deep end of the agile pool and see what happens.  If this should occur in your organization, let me know - we have statistics that can show ridiculously high ROI for agile training and coaching within a year for most teams (data based on results from various surveys and standard training/coaching costs). If you truly believe your company, division or team can't be agile for some reason, post a comment.  Let the rest of us try to help you figure out how to get there in spite of the major impediment you have! Until next time I'll be helping people remember to concentrate on the agile things they CAN do, so slowly but surely they will be Making Agile a Reality™ for their organization.

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