Agile management is one of the trending topics of the new era, and with so many companies applying and testing the concepts behind agile management it is common for some myths to arise about the topic. Today we'll talk about some myths and truths that practitioners of agile management will encounter along the way, and how to debunk them.
It has no documentation.
It is very common to find some enthusiast saying that agile management has no documentation. You have to remember the agile manifesto "We value working software more than comprehensive documentation", although "it's not because we prefer the value in the former that we don't see value in the latter".
The old maxim is still valid, if you don't document you don't learn, and if you don't learn you will inevitably make the same mistake in the future. In fact during Sprint Review and Project Restrospect meetings it is common for the Scrum Master to adopt the posture of a "scribe" documenting the most important points that were mentioned, and important decisions that the team made.
It is also common to think that in Agile management there is no schedule, because schedule reminds us of Gant Chart, and Gant Chart reminds us of Waterfall, and Waterfall is the enemy of Agile. The truth is that some methodologies like Scrum separate a process just for planning a "release schedule". This process is fundamental because it gives a good idea of when the functionality required by the user will finally be available.
You don't know how long the project will last.
True, but this does not mean that there is no deadline in agile management. We must remember that in agile the unknown is welcome, and we don't try to predict what we don't know, so during the first sprint we have no idea how long the project will last. But the uncertainty lasts only as long as the first sprint lasts. Once we know the productive capacity of the team (how many story points we work on per sprint) we can with a basic rule of 3 predict the end of the project.
The team's performance is not measured.
It is quite common to hear from critics that the agile method does not offer performance measurement tools, and therefore leaves many loose ends. The truth is that agile methods manage to unite analytical logic with the complexity of cognitive thinking, so even complex problems are broken down into small increments that, when worked on using the agile method, provide the designer with an optimal notion of the team's performance. Common metrics in agile management are lead time, cycle time, SPI, and cumulative flow chart are great tools for measuring team performance.
These are some of the most widespread myths and truths of agile management, we explore others during scrum training and certification. And do you remember any others?
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