I’ve been doing Agile for 20 years. Here’s my retrospective: it’s just meetings.

My Agile Calendar

Monday:    Sprint Planning (4 hours)
Tuesday:   Standup (15 min) + Backlog Refinement (2 hours)
Wednesday: Standup (15 min) + "Quick Sync" (1 hour)
Thursday:  Standup (15 min) + Sprint Review Prep (1 hour)
Friday:    Standup (15 min) + Sprint Review (2 hours) + Retrospective (1 hour)

Time for coding: whenever the meetings end.

The Daily Standup

The rules say 15 minutes. The reality:

09:00 - Standup starts
09:05 - "Let me share my screen"
09:15 - "Can everyone see it?"
09:20 - Someone's dog barks
09:25 - "Sorry, you go ahead"
09:30 - Actually discussing work
09:45 - "Let's take this offline"
09:46 - Same 5 people stay for "quick chat"
10:30 - Quick chat ends

Three Questions of Doom

What did you do yesterday? “Meetings.”

What will you do today? “Meetings, then try to code.”

Any blockers? “Yes. Meetings.”

Sprint Planning

We spend 4 hours deciding what to do in 2 weeks.

Product Owner: "We need to deliver Feature X"
Dev: "That's 3 months of work"
PO: "Can we do it in 2 weeks?"
Dev: "No"
PO: "What if we cut scope?"
Dev: "Still no"
PO: "Story points?"
Dev: "847"
PO: "Let's call it 8"

Then we miss the sprint. Nobody saw it coming.

Story Points

Story points are not time. They’re complexity.

In practice:

  • 1 point = done in standup
  • 3 points = one day
  • 5 points = maybe this sprint
  • 8 points = probably not this sprint
  • 13 points = we’ll split it into 5 sub-tasks of 3 points each

The Retrospective

What went well? “We survived.”

What could be improved? “Less meetings.”

Action items: “Schedule a meeting to discuss reducing meetings.”

Agile Transformation™

When management discovers Agile:

  1. Hire Agile Coach ($2,000/day)
  2. Rename Manager to “Scrum Master”
  3. Rename Tasks to “User Stories”
  4. Install Jira
  5. ✅ We’re Agile now

The Jira Lifecycle

To Do → In Progress → "Blocked" → Still Blocked → 
→ "Waiting for Review" → Back to In Progress → 
→ "QA" → Bug Found → In Progress → 
→ Done → Reopened → In Progress → 
→ Done → "Won't Fix" → Archived

XKCD 844 Predicted This

The “good code” vs “bad code” comic applies to process too. Good process is invisible. Bad process is Jira notifications.

Dilbert on Agile

Wally perfected Agile:

“I moved my ticket from ‘To Do’ to ‘In Progress.’ That’s my work for the sprint.”

Manager: “But you didn’t actually do anything.”

Wally: “The board disagrees.”

The Kanban Alternative

“Kanban is simpler than Scrum!”

Kanban board:

| To Do | Doing | Done |
|-------|-------|------|
| 847   | 3     | 1    |
|       |       |      |

WIP limit: 3. To Do limit: ∞.

My Proposal

Forget Agile. Use YOLO Development:

  1. Code when you feel like it
  2. Deploy when it compiles
  3. Meetings only on Fridays
  4. Documentation is the code
  5. Retrospective: “It shipped”

Conclusion

Agile was meant to reduce overhead. Now we have Agile overhead.

The manifesto said “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.”

We got Jira workflows and process compliance audits.

The author spent 15 minutes writing this article and 3 hours in meetings about whether to write it.