So today was a sucky day. We’ve all had them. Nothing monumental sucked, but the little things just didn’t flow. Every task seemed arduous and every conversation seemed taxing.
When I first started practicing agile, I was surprised by these sucky days. Wasn’t all this teamwork and collaboration supposed to make everything more pleasant? How could things suck when you’re singing kumbaya within your co-located cubes? In my enthusiasm and naiveté, I thought agile was going to fix my people problems.
LOL! How foolish I was! In many ways, agile exaggerated my people problems. Where there were communication problems, we now have 20-minute standups. Lack of team motivation? Now you have 3-point stories that take 6 weeks to complete. Silos? You still get defects from a lack of collaboration about the desired functionality. Trust issues? There are few process improvements because no one wants to be honest during retros.
I finally realized that no matter what methodology I practice, I’m still working with people. And people suck sometimes, myself included. The question is how can I be less sucky for my team tomorrow?
