I'm tired of Agile


Hey Reader 🤟,

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Are you working Agile but hating it? Are you feeling fatigued? Agile fatigue is popping up left and right.

So let's dive into this topic on what it is and how we can overcome it.

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What is Agile fatigue?

First things first, let's define what I understand of Agile fatigue.

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It's a mental and operational fatigue caused by prolonged exposure to agile processes without any tangible improvement.

Symptoms

Now that we are on the same line. Let's explore how to recognize the symptoms of Agile fatigue. Know that symptoms do not always mean there is agile fatigue. There could be other reasons these symptoms occur. But I do find that these symptoms are part of the agile fatigue.

1

The first thing we can recognize is that there is a lot of cynicism within the teams about ceremonies such as stand-ups, planning, retrospectives, refinement, etc. People do not participate seriously in the meeting, boycott the meeting, or do not show up at all.

Recognize this? I had a team that could not be serious during a retrospective. Avoiding all difficult discussions that had to happen.

Or team members creating the most outrageous sprint goals. Like, "Let's try to avoid Team X for this Sprint". You probably get the jest.

2

Another symptom is that the ceremonies are followed, but without any spirit. People are present, but the facilitator has to drag and pull to get input from teammates.

Some examples I faced are people splitting the restaurant bill during the Sprint Planning. Or when asked a question, the room stays silent.

3

The dragging and pulling to get input may also be due to burnout within the team or disengagement among team members, both of which can also be symptoms.

4

The last symptom I can think of is that there is an overload of tools: Jira, Azure DevOps, Confluence, Wiki, Sharepoint, Teams, Zoom. Or an overload of frameworks.

Both can be counterproductive if you cannot or are not allowed to adapt these tools or frameworks to what the team needs.

I'm going to take Jira as an example. We were stuck in a flow that other teams used without any possibility to adapt it to our needs. Very annoying.

Or there were 3 different locations for documentation without clear guidance on which tool to use. Also very ambiguous. Very tiring.

Causes

What are the reasons teams or people get Agile fatigue?

1

Well, the biggest hell you can find yourself in is when methodologies are imposed from above without any autonomy built in. You get too much process and too few values. We focus on performing the ceremonies instead of focusing on results.

One example here is a manager who expected 50+ people to attend every Sprint Review, a fluent presentation without any hiccups, and clean slides.

He cared about how we presented ourselves, not what the outcome was, and if we needed to adapt.

2

The speed of the constant change can also completely exhaust a person.

The first change has not yet been implemented, and we are already changing again. “Ah, yes, logical next step,” you think. One week later, we are already scrapping the next change and moving on to the third. Very tiring.

3

At the business level, they notice that not enough is being delivered. They have heard that Agile is the “silver bullet” for faster delivery. Thanks to Jeff Sutherland's quote

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Doing twice the work in half the time.

Unfortunately, Agile doesn't work that way. Agile exposes a lot of pain points. It's how you deal with these pain points that brings out the power of Agile working. If you ignore the pain points or block solutions to them, your “silver bullet” becomes a rotten apple.

4

The last thing, of course, is not looking at the culture within your company. People are creatures of habit.

You can't turn a micromanager into a macromanager overnight.

If everyone is used to releasing in a big bang, you can't just switch to constant integration and deployments without training the right mindset.

If you don't change the culture along with it, there will be a lot of resistance, and people will become disengaged.

Consequences

The consequences of Agile fatigue cause more headaches than Agile was supposed to solve.

I have already mentioned a few above, but let's summarize the consequences.

1

Agile fatigue leads to reduced motivation and engagement. The ceremonies lose their spirit, and the results are poor.

2

What's worse is that we experience delays despite the agile approach.

This is because we don't let the ceremonies serve their purpose. We don't highlight blockers or are not allowed/able to solve them.

3

Even when management imposes things that don't work for the team, they lose confidence in the leadership or the methodology.

An example I can immediately mention is a team that hates estimation.

“I have to adjust my hours on the tasks every day so that the burndown chart goes down nicely.”

You are playing the burn-down chart and don't let it serve its purpose. Showing real progress. You estimate to estimate and do not create a common understanding of the size and complexity of a user story.

4

The last and worst thing that can happen to an organization is that your talent leaves or “silently quits.”

Dealing with Agile fatigue

How do you deal with Agile fatigue? Let's find some ways how we can blow in new energy into this fatigue.

1

Well, you can start by reflecting on why you started working agile. Hopefully, you made a case for it before implementing it.

2

Look at your ceremonies. Why do you have that meeting? What is the purpose of the meeting?

The four ceremonies of Scrum should be enough to focus on value.

The four ceremonies are:

  • Sprint Planning: What value do we want to contribute in the Sprint?
  • Daily Standup: What are we doing today to achieve the value of the Sprint?
  • Sprint Review: What value did we add during the Sprint?
  • Sprint Retrospective: Where can we improve our collaboration to contribute more value?

These ceremonies set up a feedback loop that we call Plan, Do, Check, Act.

3

Listen effectively to the teams, what are they struggling with, and how can you or management ensure that the obstacles they encounter disappear?

4

Be flexible in the implementation; it doesn't have to be in Sprints, you can also use Kanban, or remove practices that no longer add value. Just make sure you have a feedback loop based on Plan, Do, Check, Act. My teams worked in Kanban mode during the summer months and in Scrum during the normal months.

5

Trust the teams to come up with solutions themselves. Be transparent in your work and try to find solutions together rather than pushing things through.

Sometimes, giving people a say and insight into what is coming is better than imposing it on them. It makes them feel involved.


Everything evolves around feedback. Would you be willing to give me some after this email?

If you have any thoughts on this email, feel free to reply to this email. Or share your thoughts on LinkedIn.

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Thanks for reading,

Jelmar

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Hi! I'm Jelmar a Scrum Master

I write about my Agile learning journey. Writing about the challenges I face and how I navigate this uncertain world showing that work can be different.

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