Demystifying the Myths of Agile...Revisited

Don is an entrepreneur and business leader with over 15 years experience specializing in aligning management-driven technologies and initiatives together with business and project strategies resulting in thoroughly planned and comprehensive business solutions. His expertise as a project manager, developer, tester, analyst, trainer, consultant, and business owner has spanned across diverse industries such as finance, retail, health care and information technology

  Agile  

Some prescient events occurred to me that provide the background for this article. The first was a conversation I had after a meeting whereupon a work colleague, who is new to agile, made some observations over the assumptions he had about “self-organizing” and “cross-functional” teams that seemed very wrong to me. Another is when I came across an article written by fellow gantthead writer Andrew Makar about debunking the “myths” he had about agile, which are summarized below (please read his article for eye-opening insights into the details of how he came upon his myth debunking conclusions):

• Agile Myth No. 1: Agile is just an excuse to code with no documentation
• Agile Myth No. 2: Agile doesn’t follow any PMBOK compliant processes
• Agile Myth No. 3: There is no planning in agile
• Agile Myth No. 4: Agile won’t work with distributed teams

In my situation, it lead me to brainstorm all the myths and misconceptions I had about agile and forced me to consolidate, think through and evaluate why those myths occurred--and ask myself what it took to think more correctly about them. As with anything, these interpretations are based on my knowledge and experience with agile--and I wholeheartedly welcome readers to debunk my assumptions if they appear mythical to you.

The Eternal Triangle
While …

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