“Who killed Agile?”, asks Jon Kerry, co-author of the Agile Manifesto, expressing dismay at how ugly his poster child has become. He summarizes the problem here:

“Why are we back with these giant diagrams or giant processes? Well, because it gives comfort to those middle managers who don’t actually know what’s going on as much as they might think they do.”

The full article can be found here: https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/16/jon_kern/?td=rt-3a, while below my addition to his rant.

Every single project I have been a part of over the last two decades has been told to follow the Agile methodology. We were supposed to have reached hyper-efficiency thanks to Agile. Yet many of these projects were devastated by terrible bureaucracy.

If there’s one reason why IT projects fail to meet time and budget, it’s the silent takeover by unqualified managers. Our teams are notoriously small. Even on large projects people are organised into small task groups, rarely exceeding 8 individuals. I fail to see how a handful of competent software engineers need a dedicated team manager, let alone a team manager who IS NOT actively involved in development. And I’ve seen teams of four ruthlessly governed by total ignoramuses.

Just recently Attlassian (JIRA) has released their own research into developer experience, covering the topic of productivity and workplace satisfaction, see https://devclass.com/2024/07/15/devs-say-many-of-their-hours-are-wasted-disagree-with-managers-on-how-to-fix-the-issue/. Conclusion? Quite predictable:

“Misalignment between engineers and their leaders is possibly the leading cause of a sub-optimal developer experience”

An unskilled team manager facing a team of hyperintelligent individuals will quickly notice that they speak and do things that he can only partially, if at all, understand. It’s inevitable. To not to feel insecure in such circumstances, requires wisdom, character and high level of trust towards other human beings. Few are like that. Anxiety and mistrust is typical in the middle management caste. Many will feel inferior and threatened. They may put up defence by resorting to paranoid micromanagement and pitting team members against each other, so that the manager’s superior position remains unquestioned. Everything except upgrading one’s skills and becoming helpful.

Divide et impera, seems to be the principal rule of IT project management.

Throughout my career I have met a handful of team managers without programming background, yet capable of keeping calm and giving space to people who know their craft and don’t need a capo watching from behind. Often enough I’ve experienced all kinds of dysfunction, dirty politics, ruinous decision-making, leading to excellent software engineers abandoning projects mid-term - unhappy, disappointed and depressed. Most of these disasters caused by sociopaths with little knowledge of IT, terrified that C-suite might notice their ignorance. And now they got Agile - a marvelous tool for taming rebellious teams, while producing copious amounts of bureacracy to sustain the impression that “managers are indispensable”.

Agile means being pragmatic. How about a pragmatic proposal for heads of IT departments. Send your non-IT team managers and project managers on two months of paid leave. Empower developer teams to take control and start working as self-managing task groups. Check the result after two months.

I’ll bet three months of my pay that this paid exile of the management caste will have earned three times as much, by greater efficiency, better team cohesion, lack of distraction, and time no longer wasted on endless meetings, standups, retrospections and other guilt games.

Then ask the teams if they missed their manager and see them roll on the floor laughing their heads off.