Category: Challenging Presumptions

Presumptions I Do Not Believe In

This blog was originally written in August of 2014. I’ve added a few items today. And will continue to add items as they occur to me.  When I first wrote this I called them ‘myths’ but now call them presumptions since that is more indicative of what they are.

The difference between science and religion is religion can’t abide being wrong science seeks to be wrong. Neil Tyson

One of my frustrations in the Agile industry is that so many people continue to propagate ideas which have never been truly explored and which I do not to believe to be true.  One of the foundations of the scientific method is “scientific skepticism.” Scientific skepticism means both that one does not accept something as true without evidence. And even when accepted as likely true, we keep looking for evidence that it is not.

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Challenging the Assumption That One Must Get Teams to Work First

This post was originally written 2014-03-15

As some of you may have seen, Ron Jeffries put forth a blog on SAFe that assumes something I don’t agree with – always get teams doing Agile before starting to scale. By Scale, I don’t mean making projects larger, but rather having Agile extend across the entire project.

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We shouldn’t be surprised by Dark Agile. We should be surprised Agile works as well as it does

Our Agile at scale methods are often like driving on the wrong side of the road in reverse during a rainstorm. While the driver’s are well intended, and may even appreciate that at least they’re in a car, that are better ways. Here’s a list of things we must do that are usually not done when attempting Agile at scale.

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Why the belief that starting with a pre-set start creates consistency is flawed

The two most popular Agile frameworks today suggest a preset starting method. Scrum with cross-functional teams and SAFe with Essential SAFe.

Both have the rationale that people need to start in a well-defined way and abide by it until they learn more. SAFe also promotes that consistency of practices is needed across the organization.

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Framework Tunnel Vision

Originally posts August 2013.

Disclaimer: I could have named this framework/method/process tunnel vision, but that seems a bit redundant. So don’t infer I mean to pick on any Agile approach that is a framework over one that is called a method or a process. I am just using the word framework generically. For the purposes of shortness, whenever I use “framework” in this blog, pretend I’ve said “framework/method/process/…”.

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