Comments on: Agile is NOT a Religion

By: Gene Myers

Gene Myers — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:00:28 +0000

Brilliant post! About a year and a half ago, I started a new job as Director of Product Development, and in the first week I attended a meeting where a program manager held a meeting to discuss if we should keep ‘doing’ Scrum, because we were not doing it ‘by the book’. The ‘all or nothing’ mentality drives me absolutely mad.

I particularly liked your reference to deontology and consequentialism, as well as the quote from Larman/Vodde.

Your comment, “I never seem to end up working in an environment where all the preconditions apply” sums it up though.

Keep up the good work. This post alone has prompted me to read through your achive.

By: james

james — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:34:44 +0000

PCs and Macs are not religions either, but I’m sure we’ve all met a person who treats their devotion to those hardware aesthetics with a religious fervor. Or devotees of a particular programming language.

And I’m certainly not saying you are of such religious fervor. But some people are, and they’re like that about agile. so, yeah, sometimes Agile is a religion.

By: Eduardo Miranda

Eduardo Miranda — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:54:21 +0000

Some say that Karl Marx would never become a Marxist if he was alive :)

By: dave

dave — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:05:36 +0000

I couldn’t agree more. At this point, I will refuse to hire anyone who I think is more interested in the methodology than the product and customers, and unfortunately that applies to most “agilistas”.

I fear that the witch burning has already started. I constantly see “if you don’t do agile like in , then you’re not agile and you’re wasting your time.” Since when has agile become so rigid?!

“Oh and that last bit about adapting and improving is really important.” This is key. The agility of how you respond to changing requirements of the software should also apply to the changing requirements of the process. The process needs to bend to the requirements of the business, market, and the people implementing the process, so clearly the process is also up-for-change and is not rigid.

Agile needs to move back to being a series of concepts instead of rigid actions. The current level of dogma is causing significant damage to both the movement and the agilistas.