I Did Not Expect the Agile Inquisition!

What have you done yesterday? What are you going to do today? What is getting in your way? Story points and velocity — that is the agile way to estimate and plan!

You have heard such categorical statements, haven’t you? Apart from being a total bullsh*t, these claims demonstrate another — far more significant — danger the agile community is in. The tendency to become a cult. Not a cargo cult, but a true cult with all that it brings.

You don’t believe me? Then try going through the following set of questions and think about whether, with your knowledge of the agile community, you would answer yes or no. For every yes, make a mark. (The following questions questions are taken from John D. Goldenhammer’s bookUnder the Influence: The Destructive Effects of Team Dynamics. Look at the full list of questions.)

• Do you tend to rationalize whatever the group does even when it goes against your sense of right and wrong?
• Do you often feel exhausted from lengthy group activities, meetings, and projects?
• Does your group have its own unique words, cliches, slogans, chants, prayers and doctrinal phrases that reinforce the group viewpoint?
• Are doubts viewed as a lack of faith, dedication, commitment or disloyalty?
• Do you often find yourself doing more and more things in the group or because of group peer pressure that you would not have done on your own?
• Does your group think they have/are the only or highest truth, or have the solution to the world’s problems?
• Do members of your group feel specially chosen, superior, exclusive, elite?
• Do you feel the need to save or convert others to your belief system or ideology?
• Do you find yourself thinking in a we-they, us-versus-them mind set?
• Does your group have a clear outside enemy?
• Does your group use frequent public testimonials, confessions, or sharing that reinforce the group’s mission or agenda?

Now: how many marks do you have? I bet at least some. Dr. Goldenhammer does not have any generic rule about how many “yes” answers means you are in a cult. He merely says:

Answering YES to any question means you may need to examine your group and its influence on your life in these areas.

A cult-like behaviour is absolutely anti-agile. Why? Here are a couple of reasons:

• Cults are in direct contradiction to the core agile principles of experimentation, adaptation and learning. Instead they thrive on dogmas and doctrines — not something very open to change.
• Cults are fragile structures. Usually they rely on a couple of thought leaders (and how many of these do you know in the agile community?!) who share their version of how things ought to be. Should this thought leader disappear, the cult usually ends. (And yes, there are several cults that have been able to survive the departure of the “one”; usually because of wealth or influence they’ve been able to get.)
• Cult organisation supports only a top-down dissemination of knowledge (or the “right” worldview) through the means of various levelled certifications or indoctrinations, not a bottom-up approach and the ability to pick what makes sense in the given context. (Think about some of the major players in the agile space and their certification schemes. Lean SixSigma is another beautiful example, with their belts hierarchy.)

The truth is that as long as we talk about software development, our customers are not buying the only-true-agile-approach. (There isn’t one anyway) They are buying the product. And they will be satisfied based on however this product fits their purpose. (And one of the criteria here may be how quickly can we deliver new features or how adaptable are we should they change their minds.)

So: let’s stop these cults from gaining power. Let’s point them out when we see them. Let’s acknowledge the importance of context, the necessity of pragmatism and the value of skepticism & empiricism. Let’s be a community that is open and diverse. And: let’s deliver some working, useful and valuable software in the first place, without all the new-age bullshit.

Meet me and Fred (the editor of this blog) at Agile Prague conference on 11th and 12th September. We love to talk to like-minded people and even more to people who have a different point of view than is ours.

Do you know someone that is very dogmatic about agile? Send them link to this post!