The backstory.
We started with the customer. Ended up worshipping the velocity chart. The humans got lost.
Dark Agile
People become headcount. Not humans who build things.
Jeffries called it Dark Scrum. Same disease, bigger org. See the divide
What agile actually said
Agile never started as a delivery machine.
Tap a card.
Individuals
Over process
Individuals
- Listed first in the manifesto
- Buried under rollout pressure
- Pushed to change, rarely encouraged
Collaboration
Over contracts
Collaboration
- Stay close to the customer
- Ship, learn, adjust
- Humans still in the room
Trust teams
Motivated individuals
Trust teams
- Build around motivated individuals
- Give environment and support
- Trust them to get it done
How it went wrong
Three shifts. One drift.
Customer-centric
Agile sold as customer focus. Listen sooner. Ship what matters.
Product-centric
Then velocity took over. Dashboards. Output. People turned into numbers.
Human-centric
Human-centric puts both back. Who receives it. Who builds it.
The drift
We kept the shipping part.
Product only
What we kept
Product only
- Dashboards and rollouts
- Customers became metrics
- Teams became velocity
Humans left
What we lost
Humans left
- Still on the slide, not in the center
- Progress became output
- We abandoned who it was written for
Receives
The customer. Human. Back in the journey.
Delivers
The team. Human. Back in the room.
Both
From design through scale. Both sides of the promise.
Who said it first
We didn't invent this. We just stopped ignoring it.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.Beck, Cockburn, Fowler, Jeffries, Sutherland, and twelve others
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.The Twelve Principles of Agile Software
If you want to succeed in doing software development, you need to find good people that work together at a human level, so they can collaborate effectively. The choice of what tools they use or what process they should follow is second order.The State of Agile Software, 2018
People's characteristics are a first-order success driver, not a second-order one. In fact, I have reversed the order, and now consider process factors to be second-order issues.Characterizing People as Non-Linear Components, 1999
Too often, at least in software, Scrum seems to oppress people. As a result, everyone suffers. Most often, the developers suffer more than anyone.Dark Scrum, 2016
The hard part of software design is navigating the human relationships, full of conflict and conflicting incentives.Software Design is Human Relationships, 2023