In my travels, I’m seeing a lot of Agile lately. That’s Agile with a capital ‘A’ as opposed to a small one. Mostly, what I see is pretty depressing. Irrespective, now I think bout it, of the size of the ‘a’. ‘Doing dumb stuff faster’ is my main take on what I see. ‘Start dumb, stay dumb’ is not far behind.

How quickly original intentions get corrupted. In theory, Agile is intended to be a smart response to a complex world in which there’s an awful lot of stuff you can’t know or can’t predict. The best way to respond in such situations is learn faster than everyone else. And the best way to learn is to try something, see where it goes wrong and then design your next iteration. The logic is infallible.

Or rather it would be if any learning or any ‘design’ actually took place. Instead what I usually see is an awful lot of wheel spinning. Apparently solving one problem, only to create another. Then solving that one and finding ourselves back at the place we started. Spinning wheels can feel quite exhilarating. Sadly, it’s only when all the rubber is evaporated away, we realise we haven’t made any tangible progress.

Solving one problem only to create another is the way of the world. ‘Progress’, to my mind, is ensuring the succession of problems and their solutions are good ones. Which means finding and solving contradictions.

When I ask Agile team members to show me the contradictions they’re challenging, the overwhelming reaction is a puzzled expression and a muttered response something along the lines, ‘please stop asking dumb questions, we’re busy trying to spin our wheels faster here.’ I’ve now learned that’s my signal to smile politely and walk away. Nothing I can do to help here.

Let’s keep this simple. Bad Agile is about moving trade-offs from one place to another. Good Agile is about solving contradictions. And the only Agile measure that makes any sense as far as I can see is contradiction-solving rate. On that scale, I’d have to say the current and future progress rate of well over 90% of all Agile projects is zero. Aah, the sweet, sweet smell of burning rubber. And burned up dollar bills.