AgileDC 2024 Agile Software Development Antipatterns and how to avoid them.
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The document discusses agile software development antipatterns that can lead to long-term problems despite short-term relief. It outlines various antipatterns such as inefficient meetings, high work in progress, and neglecting technical excellence, offering alternative strategies to avoid these pitfalls. The importance of maintaining a healthy development environment, focusing on team dynamics, and integrating practices like retrospectives and continuous testing is emphasized.
AgileDC 2024 Agile Software Development Antipatterns and how to avoid them.
- 1. Agile Software Development Antipatterns and How to Avoid Them
- 2. 2 @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Who We Are Coveros helps organizations build better software faster. We provide consulting, coaching, and learning opportunities to enterprises, teams, and individuals. Coveros is a GitHub Premier Partner.
- 3. 3 @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Tom Stiehm CTO • CTO of Coveros, Inc. • Agile Practitioner since 2002 • Worked in Application Security since 2004 • DevOps Practitioner since 2012 • Works at the intersection of Agile, DevOps, and Application Security
- 4. 4 An antipattern is a way to solve a problem that works in the moment but creates long-term problems. What is an Antipattern? @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 5. 5 What is so bad about Antipatterns? The insidious thing about antipatterns isn’t that they fail outright but that they work in the short-term while causing long-term failure and pain. @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 6. 6 So why do people use Antipatterns? An antipattern can solve your current problem Like technical debt, you promise to fix the long-term problem, just as soon as you can Or not because you will not be affected by them @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 7. 7 Antipattern Format Name of the antipattern Symptoms & Consequences What to do instead @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 8. 8 Expecting change without changing incentives Not changing what gets you promoted Not changing what gets you a raise or bonus Not changing what gets you fired Incentives inform culture, culture is how people behave Change your incentive system to reflect what you want @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 9. 9 Inefficient Meetings Too many meetings with too many people Hour long daily stand ups No agenda to meetings Stick to process defined meetings only Stick to the meeting agenda, offline anything else All other communications default to email @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 10. 10 High Work in Progress The work queue has too many active items The high work in progress is just accepted The team can’t make acceptable progress on work Limit the work in progress to the point where people can make progress. Most developers can handle 1 or 2 items @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 11. 11 Unrefined Backlog The Product Backlog Items only contain high level feature descriptions No refinement or no work breakdown happen The team must guess at the detailed requirements Create a definition of ready that must be met before work can begin @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 12. 12 Constantly changing team composition Team composition is changed on a regular basis People are viewed as interchangeable parts Sometimes changing the team during the sprint Keep teams together and bring the work to them @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 13. 13 Ignoring Technical Excellence and Practices The team is viewed as a feature factory All efforts to refactor or improve are denied Over time new feature creation slows down Include refactoring in estimates for work Make new feature creation contingent on the technical improvement of the software @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 14. 14 Not having retrospectives @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No Value, No Retro Nothing Changes Retro is only a complaint session Try different formats Action Items decided by team Mix it up with team building No value Lot of fun Great Value Great time No value Boring Great value Boring
- 15. 15 @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Continuous Build (CB) Using a Continuous Integration (CI) server without tests or static analysis No CI feedback on build health No feedback in integration health Put the confidence back in CI with tests and analysis, start test automation from the beginning
- 16. 16 No production-like test environment Not testing in an environment configured like production You are putting unproven software in production, it will fail at some point Create prod-like test environments Use canary releases to test in production Don’t test something first in production @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 17. 17 Management Metrics Driven Development Management dictates all the metrics used to evaluate progress Example: velocity is used to evaluate teams The metrics drive unintended consequences Focus management on business outcomes rather than team metrics @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 18. 18 Chasing the latest software trends The team is focused on how to use the latest languages || techniques || frameworks || technology The codebase is littered with half developed remnants of former latest things Focus on using the simplest tools and processes to deliver value @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 19. 19 Performance & security testing only at the end Performance and security testing are only done at release Defects are negotiated into production Shift Left – add perf and sec indicators in the pipeline Triage & fix perf and sec issues as they come up @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 20. 20 Always sprinting, no time to regroup The only activity the team engages in is creating new functionality as fast as they can No refactoring, No fixing Sec or Perf issues No training, No team building Slow down to speed up, take the time to get better and fix issues, take time off from sprinting to let them team recover @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
- 21. 21 Questions? @COVEROS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED