Those Three Little Words (or is it four?)

It's something that I used to dread, after all the hype and the information on this that is out there I feared one day I will come into work and hear the words "we're going Agile".  If you wish to dispute my counting, feel free.  It's my blog and I count "we're" as one word, so get over it.

While expecting this to come out at some point, my fear was recently fired up again when I got a notice about a company reorganization (I think we have one planned yearly), and in it were the words - "we're going to be using Agile processes".  Yup, we're going AGILE!  There was no date on it, or really any reason why, I have my suspicions but I will keep it to myself.  Last summer I gave a short presentation to my group, I do one a month and let others do it when they want or if they have something good, and in that I went over my experiences with Agile and Scrum.  Agile was done badly, Scrum was done well, though after a recent test conference I can see it being improved upon.

We discussed the upcoming change at our group meeting soon after the notice came and generated two important questions we thought would be good to answer before proceeding:

1. What is the problem we are trying to solve?
2. How will Agile processes solve the problem?

Without knowing the answers to those two going Agile means little, you need a plan and you need a purpose, there is no way adding a process over what exists is going to immediately solve every known and unknown problem.  To me there are two main reasons that companies consider going Agile:

1. They have no process and saying you are going Agile allows you to say you are just in a phase of "adaptation"
2. The process that is in place has so many exceptions that its not followed, this is the second path to "adaptation"

I am not saying everyone is in that state, but some companies that are, and want to make things look good consider Agile as a blanket they can pull over everything and hide what should probably have more light shined upon it.  Take care when the company goes Agile, more than likely its not for the right reasons, and won't be done in a way to take advantage of its strengths either.