Everyone loves Agile, right? It guarantees success, doesn’t it?
Then why do Agile projects fail?
A study conducted by the Project Management Institute identified three top reasons agile projects fail.
You will know if these are problems in your organization when you hear statements like:
“Agile allows for low quality final product. It is just a faster lower quality version of Waterfall project management.”
“We lose our creativity as developers when forced to use Agile by management. My great work and ideas will just be cut out because they are not essential.”
“Agile is too regimented and we work better in a less structured process.”
“We tried it on my last project and it just added extra stress to an already tight schedule.”
Start by laying a solid foundation of what Agiles really is. The Agile Alliance provides an insightful definition of Agile.
“Agile is the ability to create and respond to change. It is a way of dealing with, and ultimately succeeding in, an uncertain and turbulent environment.
The authors of the Agile Manifesto chose “Agile” as the label for this whole idea because that word represented the adaptiveness and response to change which was so important to their approach.
It’s really about thinking through how you can understand what’s going on in the environment that you’re in today, identify what uncertainty you’re facing, and figure out how you can adapt to that as you go along.”
Without the proper conversation and training Agile can be seen as the new flavor of the month from management and you will encounter friction points.
We have created a discussion guide to help you overcome the obstacles of When Agile Doesn’t Work.