Improving Productivity in Agile

Overview

In preparation for a keynote address at an Agile conference, we sent two messages through Twitter. The first mention we recently heard was that a Waterfall project of 10 million euros failed miserably. The second message stated that we heard about a Scrum project of several million euros that realized nothing. The reactions were striking. The responses to the Waterfall message were very harsh: “you’ve made your bed, now you must lie in it.” They also argued that the project should’ve never applied Waterfall. The responses to the Scrum tweet were very different. It was proposed that the project had used Scrum in the wrong way, or that it had applied ScrumBut, a title used for projects that implement Scrum the wrong way, as in “We do Scrum, but…” In short, it wasn’t the approach that failed, but the team. A remarkable difference. When a traditional project fails, we blame it on the methodology, but not a failing Agile project. The truth lies somewhere between the two. Research shows that Agile projects have a greater chance of success than Waterfall projects. Agile projects don’t succeed by definition, though. In our experience, the method of application is always to blame, traditional or Agile. It’s never the approach; it’s always the people.