If you google the word 'Agile', the top result (once you get past the sponsored ads and questionable AI summary) is from Atlassian. Like a poisonous frog covered in bright colours, this is a warning. Every company [1] I've worked at has practised agile to some degree. All of them did daily standups. Most of them did regular retros. Planning every fortnight, or god forbid every week, at some.
One place did it all, even the stuff nobody does like weekly grooming where only the PM and manager are allowed to come. I even got told off once for not writing a ticket in the form [as a person], [I need thing], [so I can outcome] and everything.
As far as I can tell we do it because Toyota did it in the 60s or something, and then around the turn of the millenium somebody in Silicon Valley thought it sounded cool, and now it's 2026 and we do it because we do it. It's essentially a religion at this point.
This probably all started for good reasons! Waterfall [2] is even more terrible, and I can totally see why people would seek something different. But agile is not it.
I can't think of a proper narrative structure for this post, so here's a list of Agile things and why they're awful. It's prompted by the place I'm currently working at. I was in a team that was working perfectly fine without any of this bullshit, but then they fired the two people I worked with and put me in a new team where they make me do all this stuff. And when I suggested not doing any of they looked at me like I'd taken a shit on the carpet.
Retros #
What went well last time? It was nice to ship feature X! So-and-so joined the team! I mean yeah those things are nice, but do we really need a meeting to pat ourselves on the back? It's literally our jobs!
And then the other side: what could have gone better? Hardly anything that we can actually fix. CEO being a dickhead? You're not gonna fix that with an 'action item'. Are you overworked and stressed? Haha I know right? Btw can you finish those tickets by 'close of play'?
Special shout out to the person at work who recently asked in a retro if we can start doing weekly planning sessions? Stop it. Stop now. Stop it. Just because you're middle management who spends all day pretending to be productive in meetings, don't force it on everybody else.
They're a nice idea, I guess. But the way they're run is just pointless. The best thing I can say for them is that sometimes they can work as a kind of group therapy session.
Plus, I seem to get less tolerant of meetings the older I get, so now I'm at the point where after a one hour retro I need to recover in silence for the same length of time before I can start coding again. I know that's a me problem, but it's super annoying to be forced to come this utter waste of time every other week that I'm not allowed to skip.
Standups #
I don't mind a standup when done right.
At one company we actually stood up for it so it was done in five minutes, ten tops, we started promptly on the hour, and it was less of a status update and more of a quick 'morning briefing'. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. At that point it's not even really Agile, it's just a quick way to make sure everyone's good for the day ahead. We had meetings like that in the sports shop [3] I worked in as a teenager, and nobody would accuse them of doing Agile.
However most standups are not done right. Nobody shows up on time, so you don't really get started until 10 past the hour. Then we go through the board. At best you're going to hear people speak for a few minutes about what they're up to so that they don't look like they're slacking off. At worst you'll get that, plus a bunch of tangents that waste everyone's time except for the people who are in the discussion. And then if you're lucky, you might be done by 20 to the hour.
Agile coaches #
There are a lot of pointless jobs in the world, like being a lifeguard at the olympics or the Head of Safety at Meta, but agile coaches are right up there. I feel bad saying this because I know that people who do it have put a lot of work in to get good at it, but they're good at something is isn't possible to be good at, and even if it were, is utterly useless.
We had an agile coach at an old company. You could ask them to come in and 'facilitate' one of your meetings. They'd attend and were just kind of there? They chipped in with suggestions like taking turns when speaking or breaking down big tasks into small ones. Not a bad thing to do, sure, but is that really a job?
The thing that's a real shame is that the people who do this job are really passionate about their job and helping teams to work better. If they were given real ability to effect change outside the constraints of being an agile coach, I bet they'd be way more impactful.
Sprint / cycle planning #
Waste of time. There's already a board full of tickets to pick up, just do them ad hoc. Nobody gives a shit about fibonacci sequences or planning poker. We're professional software developers, not children.
Grooming #
Nope. You didn't make the tickets right in the first place if you think you need this.
Come to me with solutions, not problems #
It's only fair that I offer an alternative system if I'm going to shit all over Agile. So here it is: trust people to do their jobs. If you need an update, ask them. If you need to track 'burndown' and 'velocity', you don't. You really don't. Am I saying just to leave everyone alone and have chaos reign? No! I'm saying that people managed to build stuff well since time immemorial, and they can do it without these ridiculous 'methodologies'.
Having a shared board of tickets isn't a bad thing, it's just a fancy shared to-do list. Keep that, lose all the other shit.
Except for the first job I had out of uni but that place was a shitshow run by a racist tory who unironically drove a Saab convertible.
↩︎This is another term where Atlassian is the top result on Google. They've really cornered the SEO market on terrible software development practices.
↩︎Please do not shop at Sports Direct. There are numerouscrediblereportsabout them treating their staff horribly. Mike Ashley can get in the sea.↩︎