1. Priya Sinha & Ben Mancini
Fragile Agile The top 10 mistakes made by new agile teams (And how to avoid doing them)
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Priya Sinha & Ben Mancini

2. Agenda Who are we… Fragile – an overview The top 10
What we have learnt

3. Who are we? Ben Mancini Priya Sinha Losing my (agile) religion
Passionate about high-performing team

4. Fragile – this is just some jokey play on agile being fragile isn’t it?

5. 1. Mindset ‘Doing agile’ but practicing something else Consider…
Top down/ bottom up drive to do agile
Dependency on other teams ‘doing agile’
Consider…
Start small, experiment and adapt
Remember it’s individual and interactions over process and tools!
Leadership backing

6. 2. No focus on customer Forgetting what the team is here for
Gold plating
Not breaking down work sufficiently
Consider…
Bigger the release, higher the risk, reduce the size, reduce the risk
Plan at different level MVP, V1, V2…
Understand real ‘business priorities’

7. 3. Unhealthy focus on estimation
Estimating because that’s what the team have always done
Relative estimation is relatively useless for some team
Software products are difficult to estimate accurately
Consider…
Understand who are you estimating for and what they need?
Consider other alternatives such as ‘release train’.

8. 4. Metrics over value to user
Talking just about metrics
Comparing velocities across teams
Consider…
Accept teams are different and will perform with variance
Burndown is not equal to delivering value to users

9. 5. Wagile Silo thinking Consider… Keep your priorities in check
Late surprises
Change request process
Consider…
Keep your priorities in check
Don’t mix project Gantt charts with Scrum/ Kanban boards
Keep asking why certain process and value exists

10. 6. Agile as religion
Agile evangelism i.e. agile is great, everything else is rubbish
Agile sweet spot is the intersection of moderately uncertain requirements and technology
Consider…
Agile is good, but so are other approaches, tread carefully
Understand your pain points before you switch
Be aware of the short term increase in cost

11. 7. Give up after 1st attempt
Impatience
Not finding the root cause
Too much context switching
Consider…
It can take up to 3 years to mature
Inspect and adapt
Focus on one thing, consider WIP limit

12. 8. Focus on the ceremony in agile ceremonies
Using ceremonies for things other than intended for
Required stakeholder ignoring ceremonies
A perception of ‘too many meetings’
Consider…
Be clear on purpose of the ceremonies
Understand the concerns around meetings
Mandatory vs. optional attendees

13. 9. Lack of transparency Refusal to discuss when things go south
An elephant in the room being ignored
No retrospectives
Consider…
Have a safe place for team to talk
Make retrospective valuable
Don’t forget to celebrate the success

14. 10. Embracing the misconceptions
Agile needs no project management
We don’t need documentation
Agile is easy
Consider…
Challenge misconceptions
Lots of agile methods you could adopt, don’t limit yourself
Agile can be easy if you do groundwork

15. What have we learnt… Keep simple
Agile is about good design and discipline
Lose religion

17. Thank you! Redgate is hiring http://www.red-gate.com/careers