I’m still waiting for Agile to just go away, it is the reason devs burn out and have miserable working lives. I started my career just before it got a hold and I remember those days being great - going to work was actually my hobby.

The worst places I’ve worked had strict Agile practices, the best has had the most loose.

Just go away already, Agile! You make so many devs lives miserable.

that's the problem. if managers thing "agile" needs to be "strictly" enforced, they haven't understood anything at all.

@tosensei Exactly. And when tasks fail to be complete by end of sprint they oftentimes blame the dev instead of the unrealistic timeline.

Agile has literally nearly made me quit being a dev completely but thankfully this and my last role are not so strict with it - just ensure progress is being made at a reasonable pace which is great.

So, the problems come from people not understanding Agile. This means that when Agile would go away, nothing would change.
You don’t want Agile to go away, you want people to stop misusing Agile.

@Lensflare I’m not sure about that. If Agile going away means taking the “idea of Agile” along with it we just go back to Waterfall pretty much. I liked that.

The point of agile is that you always work on the task that you think brings the most value to you. Why would that make your life miserable?

@electrineer - Because that aspect isn’t what makes it miserable. It is the expectation to meet “guesstimates” that are unrealistic either in scope or time to complete that makes Agile generally stressful.

@BinaryRage the point of estimation is that you can decide what brings the most value per effort. It can maybe also be helpful in risk management. Treating the estimates as deadlines is simply misuse. If you can't deliver what you estimated, you should fix the estimate.

@electrineer - I totally get what you’re saying, but that just doesn’t happen in the real world. Stories are tied to Epics which are the big picture of what needs to be completed within a given time frame which in itself is often driven by the requirements of the Product Owner. The Project Manager takes this initiative and tries to manage the team to deliver as per expectation, and pushback from devs just gets a sigh and ultimately a “just get it done” attitude. This leads to tech debt and bugs.

From what I recall as the goal for Agile is to steadily achieve great software in a structured fashion. What I have found is that even during Grooming nobody really has an idea of how long anything will take because of unforeseen circumstances arising both within and external to the project.

Agile is there to make managers feel useful, little to nothing more.

@BinaryRage to me that sounds more like micromanaged waterfall than agile

One of the greatest weaknesses of agile is that people bastardize it to suit whatever intention they have.

@electrineer Nailed it