The Bullshit of Agile

Published on April 11, 2025

Why do we do things at work that we don't do in real life, which is actually much more complex?

An Ordinary Friday Evening

For a typical couple, what needs to be done on a Friday evening?

• Pick up the kids from school
• Prepare snacks
• Do homework
• Shower the children
• Prepare dinner
• Clean the kitchen after the meal
• Organize tasks to do for the weekend

Every evening is the same, but always a bit different. Sometimes you need to go grocery shopping, sometimes you need to take the little one to soccer practice...

There's nothing really planned, no proper task assignment per se, they're simply distributed. No meetings, no sprint planning on Friday evening to organize the weekend, no retrospective on Monday morning to debate how the weekend went.

Yet everything works very well. No snack is missed, the fridge is never empty, homework gets done. Sometimes there are small hiccups, but that's life! There are always unexpected things. We deal with it and the young family still manages very well.

How is it that everything works so well since the dawn of time when it has never been thought through, planned, or anything at all?

A Complex Life

This "classic" family life pattern is both mundane and very complex. There are two adults each with their own job, often very different from one another and with different schedules; children of different ages and sometimes pets to take care of, as well as a house to maintain.

Personal life is much more complex to manage than a professional project. Compared to family life, a web project is simple!

In personal life, we do the most urgent things first, we don't ask questions. We go pick up the kids from school and we'll see later about making that dentist appointment. It's obvious. The child won't wait in front of the school. The appointment, we can make it later.

Sometimes you need to plan a bit. On Saturday afternoon if it's nice weather, we organize to keep time free to mow the lawn. We can't do it at 10 PM before going to sleep.

There's no poker planning to know if mowing the lawn takes one point or two points. Points that equal one hour or two hours respectively, but not really because we can't say that one point = 1h because it's not really a time unit (it makes no sense, it's "normal").

There's no one to debate whether we should count the time to go to the dump in the point counting.

But if we go to the dump on Saturday afternoon, there's sometimes a lot of people, particularly in spring, it could cost an extra point. But if we decide to go Sunday morning at opening when there aren't many people yet, it won't take extra points.

NO COUPLE DOES THIS.

If it takes 20 minutes to get to the dump because there are more people than usual, too bad, it's not the end of the world. It won't change the weekend at all.

Conversely, if there's no one there and it goes faster, great. But we don't take advantage to spend 15 more minutes grocery shopping because we're half a point ahead.

Why Do We Absolutely Want to Implement Such Stupid and Useless Processes?

No one would accept applying all the Agile processes in their private life. It's humiliating, useless, and a waste of time.

But why do we absolutely want to implement this in professional life?

We need to know how to apply what we say. If we say things and do absolutely the opposite, maybe that's a problem, no?

If we ourselves don't believe in what we're saying and not only don't apply it, but actually do the complete opposite, maybe that's a problem.

From my point of view, it's downright shameful and shows an immense lack of self-respect to not know how to apply what we say. It means people are lying all day long to organize something they themselves don't believe in.

That's not the life I dream of.

What Is a Web Project?

A web application is super simple. Much simpler and with many fewer parameters to consider than an ordinary weekend.

There are small bugs/unexpected issues to fix. Just like in personal life. Most of the time it's simple, sometimes it's a bit more complicated like a water leak that's more complex than expected.

Then there's adding new features, taking the most urgent first. Adding a filter system, creating a notification system, etc...

We always have improvement ideas in mind. Just like in private life. Repainting the bedroom, changing kitchen furniture, making a vegetable garden. Ideas are not lacking. We take the priority one that's within our capabilities and budget and get to it. That's all.

Is a notification system more important than adding filters to list our invoices? Yes? Then we get to it. It'll take the time it takes, anyway, like for the dump, we can't go faster. So we start this feature and that's it. If it takes a week, great, if it takes longer, too bad. We do our best and we can't change that anyway.

Thinking about it carefully, a web application is much simpler than personal life. It's simpler than knowing who does the shopping, who buys what, who's going to accompany the son to the match in the afternoon, who's going to mow the lawn, all while being careful not to do everything at the same time otherwise there's no one left to watch the youngest child at home.

So again, why want to do so many processes for something as simple as a web application?

Conclusion

Agile is about being reactive and constantly adapting. Not spending 50% of your time doing useless things.

The more you do agile, the less agile you are. The less you do agile, the more agile you are.

Haven't you ever noticed how all successful projects work? Those that succeeded and disrupted the market? None of them did agile.

The same way you don't do poker planning to organize your weekend, they had tasks to do and got to them. Like you mowing the lawn, they launched without creating a Jira ticket.

And it worked.