Agile Failures
I was pointed towards this talk given by Joe Rainsberger at the Agile 2007 conference a few weeks ago. The handout sums it up pretty well. Rainsberger is an experienced Agile coach and admitted Agile zealot. Given his good list of mistake examples, one is left wondering if he has ever been on a successful Agile project. And further, Rainsberger is a leader in the Agile movement and even he had trouble. What about the average Agile practitioner? Surely they must be having some problems too.
In his concluding paragraph, Rainsberger says:
In 2007 I realized that I had spent most of the XP-era of my career inadvertently, but consistently, forgetting about the people involved. I demonstrated this attitude by pushing ideas on them, believing the promise of XP over observing how people react to trying XP, emphasizing learning the practices over introducing what the team needs most, and perhaps most notably by assuming that everyone would be happier if they delivered software more effectively.
In short, he was apparently ignoring the context in which he was working. He was ignoring the impact that XP techniques were having on the project and the people he was forcing them on. Not surprisingly this led to some project failures. And now he is talking and writing about it. There may be some hope after all.