Be Aware of Processes Introduced by Fake Agile Consultants

Those processes are very likely wrong and costly. After all, Agile is against processes.

Over the years, I have witnessed and participated (passively) in many silly software processes.

This article shares some of the common bad processes.

Table of Contents:
∘ 1. Digital User Stories
∘ 2. Velocity based on Estimated User Story Points
∘ 3. Rational Unified Process (RUP)
∘ 4. Traceability
∘ 5. Formal Code Review Process

1. Digital User Stories

Commonly, self-labelled “agile” software teams manage user stories in JIRA or similar systems. It is wrong! This is specific advice I got from a real Agile Coach back in 2005. Not believing? Check out the following quotes from the book by Kent Beck, Father of Agile.

Not just Kent Beck. Andy Hunt (the co-author of Agile Manifesto co-author and the classic Pragmatic Programmer book) expressed similar opinions.

Andy Hunt’s tweet:

https://twitter.com/pragmaticandy/status/1214929029674999808

I have observed a crazily high ratio of the software teams spending their time on JIRA. One was about 50%.

Common sense: Jira ≠ Agile. Jira is Atlassian’s commercial software, not yours.

On 2022–11–10, DHH posted an insightful comment on LinkedIn based on the public financial figures (“losing boatloads of money”):

“These companies (Asana, Monday, Smartsheet, and ClickUp) can’t even make their own businesses work, yet they’re trying to sell you software to run yours.” — DHH (Ruby on Rails creator and co-author of best-selling Rework series)

Some of the above software, such as ClickUp, marketed themselves as a “Jira Replacement”.

Check out my articles:

• User Story Card Clarified

• Why I don’t use Jira and Confluence at all for my software development?

2. Velocity based on Estimated User Story Points

Have you seen software teams using these user story point estimation cards? Now, many think it is silly as a formal process, but it was quite common a few years ago.

Here, I will be brief. Just list a couple of quotes.