Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Nice, but …
Strange to say that “agile” Teams who follow a methodology like Scrum often tend to ignore the first value of the agile manifesto: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
For example, I have observed how very productive discussions got cut off by the Scrum Master because of Time Boxing. Even though it would have been obviously the right thing to continue the discussion, the wholy Scrum rules forbid just that. And so a productive discussion got replaced with a discussion about the absurdities of Scrum …
Another thing that might make sense for some teams but not for all is sprint planning and estimating the effort/complexity of certain tasks. I had the luck to work in great teams where we had a fantastic throughput and got everything done what the customer needed to be done. Without any planning or estimation but with a lot of trust and responsibility. I am sure that, if we had introduced let’s say 2-week sprints with planning, estimation etc. we would have considerably slowed down just because of the overhead involved.
The same applies to daily standup meetings. In a well-rehearsed team people are communicating with each other in the right amount and with the right people involved. Standup meetings just interrupt them from doing their work without providing additional benefit. If the need for a meeting arises, you can still meet, of course.
There are a lot more situations where it would be nice if everyone would remember and respect the first value of the agile manifesto … Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
