Thanks for sharing! Something I'm trying to clarify is the distinction between Agile, Kanban, and Scrum. My understanding is kanban and scrum are flavors of agile, where scrum takes into account a team's velocity and story points, while kanban values "work in progress". So I was a bit confused by what you meant by "do away with Agile altogether." Would love to know if that definition has evolved over the years, or if this definition of agile has become outdated: https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
This is a great question. Agile itself is nothing more than the manifesto and an ideology. From the birth of the manifesto came one way to implement it which is known as Scrum, which has taken the manifesto and created an entire ecosystem of people and ceremonies to distribute the responsibilities of work. It emphasizes two-week sprints, measuring velocity, and everything from sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews and retrospectives. So much for individuals and interactions over processes.
Kanban was born independently of Agile/Scrum out of manufacturing. It recognizes that there's a certain constraint on the amount of work that can be in progress at one time. If that constraint is hit, then no more work can be put in progress until it's done. New work can come in under a backlog, and re-prioritizing that work is natural and expected as needs change. There's no push to deliver something in two-weeks. There's no 'velocity' to measure and try to improve. There's no dependence on Agile at all. It's just a way to manage projects and resource allocation.
Agile today is (unfortunately) for product managers. I doubt that any of the members who signed the manifesto imagined what would happen with it :)
Here are 2 "random" people's who have something to say about agile:
- https://martinfowler.com/articles/agile-aus-2018.html
- https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2018/08/28/CraftsmanshipMovement.html
Thanks for sharing! Something I'm trying to clarify is the distinction between Agile, Kanban, and Scrum. My understanding is kanban and scrum are flavors of agile, where scrum takes into account a team's velocity and story points, while kanban values "work in progress". So I was a bit confused by what you meant by "do away with Agile altogether." Would love to know if that definition has evolved over the years, or if this definition of agile has become outdated: https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
This is a great question. Agile itself is nothing more than the manifesto and an ideology. From the birth of the manifesto came one way to implement it which is known as Scrum, which has taken the manifesto and created an entire ecosystem of people and ceremonies to distribute the responsibilities of work. It emphasizes two-week sprints, measuring velocity, and everything from sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews and retrospectives. So much for individuals and interactions over processes.
Kanban was born independently of Agile/Scrum out of manufacturing. It recognizes that there's a certain constraint on the amount of work that can be in progress at one time. If that constraint is hit, then no more work can be put in progress until it's done. New work can come in under a backlog, and re-prioritizing that work is natural and expected as needs change. There's no push to deliver something in two-weeks. There's no 'velocity' to measure and try to improve. There's no dependence on Agile at all. It's just a way to manage projects and resource allocation.