Agile Devil's Workshop

Hello Devils,

I hope 2012 has been good for you and you reaped good rewards in your efforts to drive away agility. I hope you have been able to clear minds of quite a few of your students to steer away from Agility.

I am also sad to report to that our master devil , failed to end the world on 20-12-2012 and  so now we need to work hard in 2013 to erase any sense of hope these Agile coaches might have garnered to imbibe agility to the masses.

So, here is my first lesson of 2013 and it is about the work we do best, to scare people away from the perils of Agility

Here are a few simple steps for you to instill that fear:

Help them make their Agile process look complicated :

Complex processes scare tech geeks. You need to make sure you tell the geeks that whatever they do, they have to follow the process religiously because its a company directive and the best possible approach suggested by their revered guru, “The Agile Coach”

Instill a false sense of belief in the management :

My estranged cousin, The Agile Coach has been telling the executive members that they need to invest in infrastructure, training , HR practices and policies to succeed with Agile. But you need to ask the executive a very simple question. Why do we need to spend so much when the things are smooth? Why do we need to incur an extra cost on infra etc. where all they just want is a process change. This would help to confuse them regarding their investment in support systems for Agile teams.

Agile makes all their team members, Usain Bolt avatars:

Guide them to believe you heard somewhere that Agile teams can perpetually deliver faster, take more work in the same amount of time without too many changes from management / requirement perspective. This will make them push their teams to take up additional work they can’t possibly deliver and thus create a conflict…and the simple blame will go to “Agile”. So, Its simple Sir Arthur Simple…just make Agile philosophy the scapegoat.

“Ek baar jo commitment maine ker di, uske baad main khud ki bhi nahin sunta”

(Once I have made commitment, I don’t even listen to myself to change it)

Remember , that dialogue from Macho Man Salman Khan’s movie. That’s a perfect tool for us. While they are training for Agile, tell your managers that for a Scrum team commitment is every thing and once they have decided a sprint and release plan , it is their obligatory duty to fulfill it, come what may.

So the management will put a Gun to the team’s head and chide them if they don’t deliver as per the sprint commitment and the team will feel all their ills have been brought on by using Agile technique…Beautiful thoughts, ain’t it :). Who cares about the “forecasts”

Just get them started:

Agile is so simple, right. Why do they need to spend time on hiring an expensive trainer or a coach when there is so much material available online. Why waste two productive billable days in a classroom training when we can just get started after reading a document. The consequences of that would be a half cooked agile knowledge for them and you know, half cooked is a dangerous thing 😛

So start using these principles now and I hope to hear good news from all of you soon about how many teams abandoned believing in Agile philosophy . Keep me posted  !!!

Yours Truly

The Agile Devil.