I find Agile – and the people that push it – really annoying, and I think what annoys me about it is the implication that I’m old fashioned because I prefer the old method of Gantt charts to the new method of Agility. The old, tried and tested method, used for every large project for 100 years, compared to the new and poorly-thought-out method that is Agile.
Is that a bit harsh? “Poorly thought-out?” Well let me give you an example of how half-baked Agile is compared to PMI/Waterfall/Gantt.
In waterfall we have a Gantt chart that shows the whole plan and how long we expect it to take. Some tasks are expected to take longer than others, and you can see on the Gantt chart when each one is going to happen. It is incredibly easy to see whether we are keeping up with the plan, because you colour them in as you complete them, so on any given date you can have a look and see if they are all coloured in up till the date. Very accurate and very easy.
But in comparison, Agile has no overall plan at the start, or even at the half way through point. So you can’t compare what you’ve done with what you should have done, you can’t tell if you’re running late and take appropriate action (tell the client, increase resources, whatever). You don’t really know anything. This is the new exciting way that we are being encouraged to do our projects!
But agile people DO claim to be able to measure progress, and here’s a screenshot from an Agile course with a “scientific-looking but also cool-sounding formula” (which is Agile all over)
But hang on, let’s just think about this for a minute….
1 – The “story points” are only a rough estimate of the size of the various tasks.
2 – The “total that you plan to do” is not complete – this is Agile, after all, so you don’t know yet how much you’ll be doing. To say you’ve done half when you don’t know the size of the whole is ridiculous.
3 – Just counting how much work you’ve done is really a measure of cost rather than time. Elapsed time often has no relationship to the hours worked, for example you might have to wait for something. So you can’t measure time performance by looking at cost performance.
4 – So as a guide to when you’re going to finish, or whether you’re on schedule (when Agile doesn’t even HAVE a schedule) this is next to useless. In fact probably WORSE than useless since it gives you illusion of knowing what’s going on when you really don’t.
Please, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and getting a new trendy baby, maybe have a look at the accumulated wisdom of 100 years and see that it is actually BETTER.
Right, I’m going to lie down in a darkened room now and try to calm down!
