Comments on: Journal of Agile/Scrum Failure

By: Mark Levison

Mark Levison — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:08:48 +0000

Fresh Baked – I think we agree on this point. I don’t think Agile/Scrum/Kanban ever actually fail. I think projects fail, organizations and teams fail to implement Agile correctly but that isn’t a process failure. Maybe I should’ve called it “Agile Project Failures”. Even those failures can be good if they allowed projects to be killed as appropriate.

By: Fresh Baked

Fresh Baked — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:41:42 +0000

I’m not sure “failure” is the term anyone used, but I have been involved in a number of “abnormal terminations” of projects that were at least advertised as being agile by the people involved. One of them involved an investment firm who hired an “Agile guru” to assemble a team of fellow expert consultants to rebuild their entire CRM system, using a tool described as “platform-independent and agile architecture” named LANSA. They had scrums going constantly in the “war room” and kept on pushing out releases, but were never able to deliver one that the customers accepted and the whole thing died after several years and millions of dollars. Fairly or unfairly, blamed the “failure” on the leader and Agile/Scrum methodology.
I was involved as a participant in two other Agile/Scrum projects, one large and one small, neither of which delivered anything of value to the clients. Perhaps, as stated above, these are failures by the people and not the methodology, but can’t that be said about all methodologies? The failures are still attributed to the system/philosophy, and I think think it is valid. The methodology may not have played the major role, but it certainly was a significant contributor. In fact, I have never seen a completely successful Agile/Scrum project – they all seem to drag on forever, or until they run out of funding.

By: Rob Evans

Rob Evans — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

This is a *really* great idea and boy have I got some war stories. Are there any guidelines for failure reports — length, tone, etc..

By: HL Arledge

HL Arledge — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Mark

I would love to contribute, but from my experience: there is no such thing as Scrum failure. Scrum is a process to help manage processes. True Scrum projects never fail. Scrum projects are occasionally perceived as having failed, only when team follow their own pseudo-Scrum, and self-managed teams in general fail when their goals are not clear, and their leaders do not have the courage to remove those who refuse to play by the team’s rules. I can say this, not as a consultant, or someone with anything to sell. I say this as a Development Manager, who has seen Scrum work miracles.

Regards,
HL

By: David Sims

David Sims — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Nice. Looking forward to reading some stories. We’ve had our failures too. Would be instructive to read what’s happened to others.

By: Gerald Williams

Gerald Williams — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I will link to this. People tend to shout about their victories not their defects so this will be useful lessons learned to all those trying to implement scrum. Thanks

By: Capers Jones

Capers Jones — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

A journal of Agile failures would be instructive. Also useful would be information on Agile projects that end up in court for breach of contract.

On the opposite side of failure, it would also be useful if Agile projects submitted data on productivity and quality to the International Software Benchmark Standards Group (ISBSG.org).

This is an Australian non-profit that has data on about 5000 software projects, and is adding new ones at perhaps 500 per year. However few are Agile projects in spite of the wide usage of Agile.