What I Don't Want to Hear Anymore in an Agile Project

I often have the impression that saying that a project is agile is an excuse to say that there is nothing to criticize since we are agile. Why do you say that there are things to improve since we are agile? And by the way, since the project itself is agile, then all its project members are. Agility is also a mindset, for which I wanted to share with you what I have heard from some so-called "agile" projects.

"We don't need a Daily Meeting! Besides, the user stories will be ready in a month, anyway!"

Let's say just it's an opportunity to make sure everyone knows what everyone is doing, see which subjects are linked together, bring up complex issues, etc. After that, if you don't know in the morning what you'll be working on, you should worry, right? And no, I wouldn't comment on the second part of your sentence. I'll do it iteratively I think...

"Here, I'll send five e-mails to the same person about what he should do as quickly as possible, in the tone of order. Oh, he has a deliverable to send tonight!?!?"

This is called micro-management. In short, you're blowing the wind and not allowing people to move forward. Plus you just raised his blood pressure. Not sure he needed it.

"So for this user story, you will do such and such things, in such and such a way, and you will go through me to do it and you will make me check everything, and if I could do it for you, it would be even better. By the way, have you finished? Have you finished? Have you finished?!"

Well, no, if we don't delegate anything, we're not as well off. Not to mention that checking everything and framing everything does nothing to empower people. I'm saying that as I confess to doing the same thing. To my 15-month-old son. But is the person you're looking at a child? Do you think this person's spouse talks to them the same way? I have great news for you! There is a good chance that the person in front of you is an adult and will not be placed under guardianship!

"We're gonna do four-week sprints!"

A four-week sprint, a fortiori, will be rather a long expedition. On that note, I go to buy mountaineering equipment.

"You're an architect. You're not concerned with agility!"

Seriously, don't tell me that.

"How about a fast review on this subject between you and me? Yes, totally! Is the meeting room available?

Do you have something to hide? Can you not talk louder than 130db? Doing this is the best way to not isolate information. If open spaces were created, it is not only for questions of the cost of real estate, perhaps to decompartmentalize people between them, no? To get the information out, right?

"I don't think it's worth having a Trello."

Too bad I had a more complete solution to offer you! But why are we refusing to trace the tasks? I'm gonna have to make my own Trello that I'd only share with myself?

"We don't need to manage the technical debt because we won't have any."

Uh, yes we will! We're bound to have some because in agile, we emphasize functionalities than the way how to do it. So if you want your project to be scalable and with a clean data model, technical debt management would be welcome!

What are the anti-agile mindset patterns you may have heard? Listen to you in the comments!