When people talk about Agile, they’re referring to one of two things: the manifesto, or the popular “agile” process.
Problem is: the popular process breaks a lot of the manifesto’s principles. The concept of “sprints” goes directly against the manifesto’s call to a sustainable pace. And in practice, the popular process tends to be documentation- and beurocracy-heavy.
This article is drawing some unsubstantiated conclusions from a very small sample size, and they don’t seem to consider many other explanations. For example, it may be that companies are more likely to use an agile methodology when they’re expecting changing requirements or limited input, so it makes sense they’d have a higher failure rate. Correlation != causation.
The article only touched on the real issue: companies that employ agile (especially the largely-ineffective popular process) are often the types that use it as an excuse to skimp on other areas. Agile or not, any project without clear direction and some documentation up front is going to struggle (and the manifesto’s emphasis on working software over documentation wasn’t referring to high-level requirements).
When people talk about Agile, they’re referring to one of two things: the manifesto, or the popular “agile” process.
Problem is: the popular process breaks a lot of the manifesto’s principles. The concept of “sprints” goes directly against the manifesto’s call to a sustainable pace. And in practice, the popular process tends to be documentation- and beurocracy-heavy.
This article is drawing some unsubstantiated conclusions from a very small sample size, and they don’t seem to consider many other explanations. For example, it may be that companies are more likely to use an agile methodology when they’re expecting changing requirements or limited input, so it makes sense they’d have a higher failure rate. Correlation != causation.
The article only touched on the real issue: companies that employ agile (especially the largely-ineffective popular process) are often the types that use it as an excuse to skimp on other areas. Agile or not, any project without clear direction and some documentation up front is going to struggle (and the manifesto’s emphasis on working software over documentation wasn’t referring to high-level requirements).
Overall, 2/10 article.