7 Myths and Misconceptions of Agile Development

1.Usage of tool: Whenever team decides to go for Agile .Team  decides and hunts for tool for Agile implementation. To be fair enough agile is more like a methodology, approach rather than tool. Yes there are tools which simplifies Agile implementation but as an Agile team is not mandatory

2.Agile Manifesto:-There are 4 principles present and Agile methodology preaches for successful Agile teams but most of team misunderstand the principles like they do not do documentation, they do not follow any processes and tools. But that is not what Agile preaches .To explain it more in precise way. Agile manifesto says

·         Individuals and Interactions more than processes and tools

·         Working Software more than comprehensive documentation

·         Customer Collaboration more than contract negotiation

·         Responding to Change more than following a plan

While the secondary concerns were important the primary concerns were more critical to success.

3.Sprint Duration:-Sprint is a time boxed duration where a demoable product is shown.Where time boxed means duration which could be in days,weeks etc.Almost all the agile teams feel that 2 weeks sprint duration is ideal or recommended for agile development.One week sprint duration becomes too short and 3 weeks sprint duration becomes too long.To be fair enough there is no ideal sprint duration for Agile team .It is completely dependent on the product owner and agile team to decide upon sprint duration.It depends on complexity of work,product and other associated factors

4. Estimation:-Estimation in Agile is done through story points.Story point estimation is always a relative based unit less estimation.All the teams follow the estimation techniques be it t-shirt size,planning poker etc but all the teams convert the points into days ,hours in order to make it trackable which creates lot of confusion and ambiguity and removes the actual complexity of work to be done

5.Retrospective meetings:-Retrospective meetings are held in end of sprint in order to check what went well for the team,what went wrong but most retrospective meetings are used as tool for blame game from one person to another which ultimately leads to employee dissatisfaction and frustration increases tension  

              

6.Scrum meetings:-Scrum meetings there is thumb rule that daily scrum does not long more than 15 mins but to be fair enough all the scrum meetings exceed more than 15 mins and eventually people discussing other impediments and issues in the meeting .Also if the scrum team is more than 7-10 members then obviously daily scrum duration increases .In that case it is advisable to split the team across smaller teams  and conduct scrum of scrums

7.Responding to change:-Agile development principle always believes that a team should not react to changes rather respond to change .Changes should be expected if there are early in development and early in sprint.changes accepted late in sprint actually creates lot of confusion and ultimately the quality of product is made questionable