Process FOMO

Here's the image the SAFe Agile folks put on their website with a straight face. I can only assume this is a FOMO scare tactic. I mean, do we have a CoP? Does my team have a lean agile mindset? Do we have Big Data?

Since the mid-90s, we've been conducting the Grand Agile Experiment. Agile, we thought, will free us from the bonds of rigidity and allow us to deliver working software that does what the customer needs it to do. Maybe we'll even have the software available in a timely manner.

Now there's an entire industry around Agile. There are coaches. There are accreditations. The word "methodology" is thrown around as if it means something.

Reams of Documentation

When I started, The Process used to be something like:

1. Create System Requirements Specification (SRS)
2. Create System Design Description (SDD)
3. Create Software Test Document (STD)
4. Create Operations Manuals
5. Create Hardware Design
6. Create Project Plan
7. Create Wireframes
8. Create UML in Rational Rose
9. Write Software, I guess

We'd write these things, print them into three-ring binders, have review meetings for them, get sign-offs. We'd commit to deadlines years ahead of time. Hardware budget cycles were long, so we'd make WAGs for our hardware needs, which were a different color of money anyway so we'd just aim for the stars.

Then, after all that was done, and the committees were satisfied and signatures gathered, we'd allow the software team to begin programming. In 6 months or a year, we'd return with a  system that may or may not meet the needs of the users. Who cares, mission accomplished, it passed our Verification and Validation stage, your signature is right there, pay me.

The Goalposts Shifted

If nothing else, we at least aren't living and dying by what's printed in a three-ring binder.

• Fewer static documents
• Fewer Signoffs
• Less "throw it over the wall"
• Incremental deliveries instead of big-bang handovers
• Customer feedback loops to update the documents

I see the coaches, the books, the methodologies, the infographics and it makes me sad that the core ideas of Agile got enshittified into branded products and services, but at least we're trying to respond to the customers and their needs now. The complex processes may be inevitable, because the world is complex. I'm not even sure the manifesto really had an opinion on process weight. The best organizations do well because of their people, often in spite of their processes. And in that regard we're right where we always were.