- 4.1 Goals of Agile Process Maturity
- 4.2 Why Is Agile Process Improvement Important?
- 4.3 Where Do I Start?
- 4.4 Understanding Agile Process Maturity
- 4.5 Applying the Principles
- 4.6 Recognition by the Agile Community
- 4.7 Consensus within the Agile Community
- 4.8 What Agile Process Maturity Is Not
- 4.9 What Does an Immature Agile Process Look Like?
- 4.10 Problems with Agile
- 4.11 Waterfall Pitfalls
- 4.12 The Items on the Right
- 4.13 Agile Coexisting with Non-Agile
- 4.14 IT Governance
- 4.15 ALM and the Agile Principles
- 4.16 Agile as a Repeatable Process
- 4.17 Deming and Quality Management
- 4.18 Agile Maturity in the Enterprise
- 4.19 Continuous Process Improvement
- 4.20 Measuring the ALM
- 4.21 Vendor Management
- 4.22 Hardware Development
- 4.23 Conclusion
4.10 Problems with Agile
Too often agile has become an excuse to work in a very loose and ineffective way. We have seen agile teams use the agile manifesto as an excuse to not plan out their projects and also to not communicate their plans with others. Sometimes teams also fail to document and track requirements, which can lead to many problems, including a high incidence of defects. We have also seen teams that used agile as an excuse to not document their work. Mature agile processes provide the right balance of planning, requirements management, and documentation to avoid mistakes and get the job done. We recall one major incident in a large bank where a vendor claimed to be employing agile and shipped a release that was not really ready to be seen by the customer.
Although agile has its challenges, let’s not lose sight of the challenges often seen in waterfall.