With the recent popularity of the Agile methodology, I’ve seen a lot of people say they do Agile when in fact they do not. Here’s some common mistakes things I’ve seen.

  1. Just because you have iterations doesn’t mean you’re doing Agile.

I think a lot of PMs love to have iterations so they always have a reason to crack the whip periodically, but fail to realize what the actual purpose of an iteration is. So after an iteration is done, these PMs would not allow time for a refactor or do a retrospective to see how to improve their process and reconcile requirements with the stakeholders. Pretty much it’s “Ok, Iteration X is over, it was hard, now start your Iteration X + 1 tasks”. Even worse is when every iteration they plan out design, implementation, and testing, then it’s like iterative waterfall or something.

  1. Each iteration should not be treated like the end of a project.

Kind of an addition to #1, but basically the issue here is iterations tend to get delayed or massive overtime is used to hit an iteration deadline early or in the middle of a project. One purpose of iterations is to also help gauge the speed of development, so if tasks aren’t completed as quickly as expected, then move the tasks out and make sure an iteration only has the things that will get done in time to have something ready to show. Dumping overtime in the middle of the project is a surefire way to make the subsequent iterations suffer.

  1. Daily standups are meant for the developers, not the PMs/leads

Seems like a lot of PMs and leads like the idea of a daily standup because it allows more micromanagement. The purpose of the daily standup is to actually inform other members of the team on what they’re doing and what is causing them problems. This is so other devs can offer help to whom they think they can help the most when they have free time, or immediately in the case of a problem. When the PM drives these it tends to often slide into the “waste of time” end of the scale.

I’m sure I could come up with many more, but then this post would start looking like an Agile guide, and I can’t say I’m qualified to make one of those anyway.