“For all its proponents,” writes Mike Brown of uTest, “Agile has its fair share of skeptics and detractors. These are people who have a much different Agile experience—one characterized by chaotic processes, lower quality, miscommunication and numerous other problems.”
And those critics are not in the minority. In 2012, Max Smolaks of TechWeek Europe,reporting on research conducted by Voke Media to determine what 200 different software companies thought of their attempt to embrace Agile, wrote:
Out of over 200 participants, 64 percent said that switching to Agile Development was harder than it initially seemed. Forty percent of respondents did not identify an obvious benefit to the practice. Out of those who did, 14 percent thought it resulted in faster releases, and 13 percent—that it created more feedback. Seven percent of participants noted that Agile developers were happier due to reduced future planning and documentation.
These results strongly suggest that for organizations entrenched in years of non-Agile working practices, making the switch can be difficult, if not counterproductive. As SmartBear’s Scott Barber explains:
I believe that the trend to “go Agile” is misguided. If a company is developing good software, the people involved in developing that software are happy working there, the software development is sustainable, and the business is being adequately served by that software, there’s really no need for them to try to be more or less Agile. Agile has challenges like any other culture, but the single biggest challenge I find is companies trying to solve development, process, management, and/or schedule problems by “going Agile.” Teams who have grown up in a culture that is fundamentally different than Agile simply will not find it easy to “go Agile.”
In other words, companies expecting Agile to be a magic bullet to fix whatever ails their production efforts may be seriously disappointed, as it demands more of a systemic culture-shift than merely embracing a new set of tools and procedures. Moreover, it isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. What works for a small San Francisco startup may be completely inappropriate for an enterprise with 5,000 employees distributed in cities around the world. Agile might not also be the right practice for software companies and IT firms that are subject to regulatory compliance mandates, such as government agencies and their contractors, where extensive documentation and procedures rife with checks and balances are essential.
Naturally, proponents of Agile suggest that virtually all of the problems, complaints, and negative experiences that companies attempting to use Agile have reported are due not to a problem with Agile itself, but with a failure to understand the approach and its limitations. Others, such as technology strategist Lajos Moczar, claim to understand Agile fully and yet contend that its guiding principles are flawed.
In an article on CIO.com published in June 2013 and titled “Why Agile Isn’t Working,” Moczar ignited a firestorm, with pro-Agile and anti-Agile commenters on his post engaging in mild verbal warfare. “The comments in this thread have taken a strangely negative religious tone,” noted one participant, “like watching one sectarian argue doctrine with a member of another sect.” As with all ideological paradigms, some people embrace—or denounce—Agile with an almost spiritual fervor.
However, there are many signs suggesting that despite its potential drawbacks, the rapid adoption and popularization of Agile is largely based on the pragmatic demands placed on software production and information technology in the early 21st century. When everything is changing so fast, some agility is simply required.