I'd like to underline this about a thousand times.
(disclaimer: I teach agile to teams) What I see over and over again is folks picking up agile and a) getting too religious about it, and b) immediately making it 5 zillion times more complicated than it has to be. Usually with the use of tools (but creative minds have been known to create manual monstrosities)
If I could eliminate people who already know everything (either pro or con) and folks who for some reason want to complicate everything? Life would be a lot easier for agile teams.
I saw a guy once -- no shit -- that had created a 20-tab spreadsheet to "do" agile. Each sprint close he forced the team to sit down while he went through each item on a projector. Their backlog had 600 items in it. It was like taking a big dump truck with manure and just covering the team in it. I insisted they move to a physical storyboard, and when I checked up with them a few weeks later they had this storyboard that looked like the wiring diagram for a 57 Chevy. Colors and lines and tags and color-coded cards.
Agile is easy, but it's possible to screw it up if you keep trying hard enough. Start simple and then add what you need.
I'd like to underline this about a thousand times.
(disclaimer: I teach agile to teams) What I see over and over again is folks picking up agile and a) getting too religious about it, and b) immediately making it 5 zillion times more complicated than it has to be. Usually with the use of tools (but creative minds have been known to create manual monstrosities)
If I could eliminate people who already know everything (either pro or con) and folks who for some reason want to complicate everything? Life would be a lot easier for agile teams.
I saw a guy once -- no shit -- that had created a 20-tab spreadsheet to "do" agile. Each sprint close he forced the team to sit down while he went through each item on a projector. Their backlog had 600 items in it. It was like taking a big dump truck with manure and just covering the team in it. I insisted they move to a physical storyboard, and when I checked up with them a few weeks later they had this storyboard that looked like the wiring diagram for a 57 Chevy. Colors and lines and tags and color-coded cards.
Agile is easy, but it's possible to screw it up if you keep trying hard enough. Start simple and then add what you need.