The Agile Industrial Complex is a horror show, but that doesn't mean it's not possible to do agile well.
There absolutely is a way of doing agile well, I've been involved in a number of teams that did. And it worked extremely well. In fact, we did agile way before the agile manifesto came out, and before I was aware of there being a name for the things we were doing. We were just doing them because they make sense, they make us go fast and they let us have fun while doing it. Which is basically what the XP people said when they started writing things down. They never claimed to have invented a brand new way of creating software. No, they were observing that certain teams were very productive, and looked at what those teams were doing. If there was a pattern. Spoiler: there was.
Anyway, I also introduced agile "practices" in a large company. Well, in a small team in a large company. We didn't do a single one of the practices the Agile Industrial Complex proposes and often mandates. The much more important team next to us did. They did all the AIC practices. We did the technical. And interacted closely. Did TDD, worked on trunk, paired when necessary, did stuff alone when not. Did the simplest thing that could possible work. ("Where's your database?" "We'll put it in when we need it". <later> "Oh we're done. I guess we didn't need the database ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" ).
The more important team next to us that was doing Scrum with the standups and whathaveyounot failed. We delivered. Hmm.
And if you can point to the practices being promoted by the AIC as being in direct and obvious conflict with, for example, what's written the Agile Manifesto, and can in fact point to ways of doing it right that are in harmony with the AM and in conflict with the AIC, then it ain't a No True Scotsman fallacy. It's a simple case of the AIC doing it wrong.
I too have seen great agile. However, it required the team to be in control of its own destiny. Namely, we didn’t have deadlines and the goals we reported against were impact. That meant we could run no-weekly sprints while safely fitting delivery into the goal reporting timetable.
In most companies, it seems management is incapable of measuring progress other than “will X be done before Y date”.
maybe the idea of "proper agile" is too vague to even be useful?
"That's not agile"
Has become one of the most annoying arguments I've ever heard. As someone who experienced a corporate takeover of agile "consultants", I can tell you, it is one of the hardest things to try and deal with people who have their own idea about agile.
"Proper agile" is too "team specific" that maybe it shouldn't have been a "manifesto", just call it good "team practices" and maybe it wouldn't have become such a cult
It's not.
> I have never seen it done correctly
I have. And it wasn't hard. In fact, it seemed entirely effortless at the time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36727366
The Agile Industrial Complex is a horror show, but that doesn't mean it's not possible to do agile well.
There absolutely is a way of doing agile well, I've been involved in a number of teams that did. And it worked extremely well. In fact, we did agile way before the agile manifesto came out, and before I was aware of there being a name for the things we were doing. We were just doing them because they make sense, they make us go fast and they let us have fun while doing it. Which is basically what the XP people said when they started writing things down. They never claimed to have invented a brand new way of creating software. No, they were observing that certain teams were very productive, and looked at what those teams were doing. If there was a pattern. Spoiler: there was.
Anyway, I also introduced agile "practices" in a large company. Well, in a small team in a large company. We didn't do a single one of the practices the Agile Industrial Complex proposes and often mandates. The much more important team next to us did. They did all the AIC practices. We did the technical. And interacted closely. Did TDD, worked on trunk, paired when necessary, did stuff alone when not. Did the simplest thing that could possible work. ("Where's your database?" "We'll put it in when we need it". <later> "Oh we're done. I guess we didn't need the database ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" ).
The more important team next to us that was doing Scrum with the standups and whathaveyounot failed. We delivered. Hmm.
And if you can point to the practices being promoted by the AIC as being in direct and obvious conflict with, for example, what's written the Agile Manifesto, and can in fact point to ways of doing it right that are in harmony with the AM and in conflict with the AIC, then it ain't a No True Scotsman fallacy. It's a simple case of the AIC doing it wrong.