Agile Myths

Many newbies to Agile bring tons of myths and misconceptions. They would have picked this baggage either by attending a seminar, reading a book or blog. It is not that the sources are wrong, but these enthusiasts would have misunderstood/misinterpreted the concepts.

Some of the common myths I keep hearing around Agile are :

1. Agile means two people working together on a computer.

Agile is a set of values and principles. Two people working together on a computer is one of the practices from Extreme Programming (A.K.A XP). Many people get confused between the Agile and the implementers of Agile (XP, Scrum, etc).

2. Developers working on Agile projects don't do any documentation

Agile Manfiesto never said don't do documentation. In fact, Agilists say that do documentation only as required that adds value to the customer and don't do it for the sake of satisfying some process.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to maintain extensive documentation, and if so, irrespective of whether it is Agile or not, it needs to be done.

For ex: projects involving avionics or military related projects need extensive documentation, this is keeping the sensitive of the domain in mind. In such cases, one has to maintain documentation because it adds value to the customer.

3. Agile methods cannot be applied for distributed development projects

There are many projects that have been carried out in distributed development applying Scrum and XP. The projects are pretty successful. Key thing to be successful while implementing Agile methods is being innovative with practices. Creativity and Innovation are the key ingredients to succeed in an Agile environment.

4. Agile methods expect the team members to be matured

Another big myth. There is no measurement to classify matured from immatured people. Its all perception and context dependent. Agile manifesto never talks about maturity of people, however Agile suggests hiring good people and trusting them to do the job.

Personally I worked with junior/senior members in various projects. Some team members were very good in communication while lacking in many facets of soft skills. However I found that many Agile practices(like scrum meeting, modeling days, retrospective,etc) helped the developers to improve their soft skills. This improvement is just a byproduct of practicing Agile methods.

5. Agile is not suitable for product development

Agile is being successfully practiced both in services and product development environment. In fact, I feel this is more appropriate for a product development environment. This is because, Agile concepts makes the product development more flexible and more open for changes to sustain in the competitive market.

6. Agile is not suitable for fixed bid projects
Many Agile companies specifically with my experiences in Indian context have been practicing Agile methods with fixed bid projects. If customer is willing to collaborate with the development team and, the development team is transparent with their deliverables then, all these types of contracts/negotiations would take back seat.

I have seen Agile software companies signing fixed bid contracts with the customers. Since the software services vendors are transparent in what they do, any new change request given by the customer is suitably discussed on the table and a solution emerges. The new change request is accommodated either by extending the release date/expansion of budget OR by dropping low priority features.

Here are some more resources on Agile Myths

Agile Mania

Agile Myth busters

5 Agile myths