Why Agile Doesn't Always Work
For all its proponents, agile has its fair share of skeptics and detractors. These are people who have a much different agile experience—one characterized by chaotic processes, lower quality, miscommunication, and numerous other problems.
Based on the observations of several experts, agile seems to “fail” whenever it’s forced on a team that is accustomed to other methods. After years of developing and testing in a certain manner, one cannot expect an entirely smooth transition.
Out of more than 200 participants, 64 percent said that switching to agile development was harder than it initially seemed. Forty percent of respondents did not identify an obvious benefit to the practice. Out of those who did, 14 percent thought it resulted in faster releases, and 13 percent—that it created more feedback. Seven percent of participants noted that agile developers were happier due to reduced future planning and documentation…
“While many people assume that Agile is faster, better, and cheaper, actual results vary greatly. Many organizations are diving into the Agile movement without a clear understanding of what it is, and what the consequences of adoption may be. …,” said Theresa Lanowitz, lead analyst at Voke.
The process of “going agile” must be clearly explained and outlined; otherwise, development practices will change—but in name only.
“I don’t think most people need convincing about agile principles, even if they’re just attracted to the idea of frequent delivery,” said Nate Oster, an agile player-coach and founder of CodeSquads LLC. “In practice, however, a lot of waterfall behaviors survive by hiding behind the new agile jargon. If we want different results, it’s not enough to change our jargon, we have to actually change the way we collaborate!”
Oster continued, “I think the deep-down objection to agile is that it challenges our hidden assumptions. A lot of our cherished ‘best practices’ from waterfall are actually optimizations of ‘our job’—they make us ‘efficient’ but actually undermine the agile goal of frequently delivering high-quality software as a whole team.”
The transition to agile isn’t easy. As Oster points out, the problems of the agile transition have less to do with agile and more to do with existing practices.
“In my experience the biggest challenge with adopting agile is how it just relentlessly exposes what we’re not very good at yet, and in a lot of organizations, that includes testing,” he said. “Traditional testing is really a broken system, because these huge piles of work arrive late in the game.”
When trying to adopt agile practices, there will be a ton of excuses for why it won’t work. Those who understand the real benefits of the approach—and genuinely want to make the transition—will likely have success. Those who are searching for reasons why it will fail—well, they will likely find them and either abandon the effort entirely or end up practicing what Elisabeth Hendrickson calls “ fake agile.”
To learn more, read Why Agile Development Fails (Sometimes) on the uTest Software Testing Blog.
Have you worked on a project where agile failed? Why do you think agile didn't work for you?
