Over the years, I have heard many people say some Anti-Agile Thoughts or Patterns in Running an Agile business and the Scrum Anti-Patterns made me think about this fun topic. Kind of our Dilbert Manager in the Agile Uprising Coalition World. I hope everyone gets to share some really Anti-Agile Thought Patterns they have heard from co-workers, scrum masters, agile coaches and managers as they go about your day. I’ll start off with two I heard lately.
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I was asking, if there was a plan for cut-in and the manager asked: “Why do you need to know?” Now maybe, I should have a reason, but in the agile world everything is exposed. The more people seeing it, the more people will find risk or add something from experience.
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The other one was a 2-day-er. On one day the manager said, “You should make sure the team is only signing up for their average sprint velocity in points in this Sprint”. The manager was really stern about it . Then the very next day, the same manager says, “All the MVP work is supposed to be done in this Sprint.” How does that work if there are more MVP points remaining than the average velocity?
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Here is something I heard back in the 90’s when we were clearing out old files. The manager said “Make a copy before you trash the file.” We all looked at each other and laughed as soon as he left the file room. In the end he meant for us to make microfilm, but most of the papers were just computer screen printouts anyway and not worth the effort.
Anyway please reply with your own things that you heard than make you go, hmm?