SABOTAGILE! – PROVEN TECHNIQUES FROM INDUSTRY EXPERTS TO FAKE AGILE, DEFEND THE STATUS QUO & ADVANCE YOUR CAREER

 Are you frustrated with the needless distractions from flavor of the decade buzz-words like Lean, Agile, Scrum, Lean Startup, DevOps, etc. etc.? Have you been looking for a quick way to create a “wrapper” around your existing processes to satisfy process zealots and go back to doing real work? Well, look no further! I have combed through years of Agile Coaching experience to bring you proven techniques from industry experts who have successfully faked all these buzz-words without changing their thinking, culture or processes.  This unique approach is…

1. Scalable: Does not matter how many resources you have to deal with, this approach works!
2. Extensible: Does not matter what new buzz word your stakeholders are throwing at you, this approach works!
3. Flexible: This works for any technology stack, business domain, culture, etc. etc.
4. Change Proof: See #2
5. Affordable: Doesn’t matter what your budget is. If you can afford high priced consultants from big name consulting companies and invest in million dollar tools, awesome! If not, don’t worry – your PMO can apply these values and principles to cook up your own wrapper.
6. Predictable: This approach works. Guaranteed. This takes the uncertainty out from any <insert buzz-word here> Transformation Initiative political winds might compel you to run.
7. Reliable: This approach will not fail. Guaranteed!

Manifesto for SabotAgile! Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of faking Agile Software development, defending the status quo and advancing our careers.

Through this work we have come to value:

Defining processes with Milestones, Phase Gates, and Audit Trails

Tracking progress with Gantt Charts, %-age completion reports and Red-Yellow-Green executive dashboards

Holding resources accountable with baselined contracts with fixed-scope, fixed-dates, fixed-costs

Preventing a descent into chaos with rigorous change control boards

Integrating phrases from flavor of the decade fad into lingo without changing behavior

This is how we have delivered software in the real world for decades

And this is how we are going to do it!

Principles behind the SabotAgile! Manifesto

Rigorously control deviation from plan to prevent resources from wriggling out of commitments & to prevent business from moving the goal-posts.

Increase efficiencies from resources through economies of scale, phase gates and large batch sizes.

Use proxies between business people and resources, enabling business people to be externally focused and do real work.

Use management oversight, performance objectives and bell-curves to maximize output from resources.

Use documents and e-mails with audit trails as primary means of communication with resources.

Executive dashboards are the primary measure of progress made by resources.

Resources work late nights, weekends and cancel vacations to meet deadlines.

Resources meet commitments by delivering to production and then patching with agile fast-followers as needed.

Leverage economies of scale by having resources deliver as many features as possible in each release.

Hire smart technical leaders to come up with architecture and design that junior resources can implement.

Provide a sense of freshness to resources by integrating buzz words from latest fasionable flavor(s) of the decade into process and procedures manuals, training and executive communication without changing our way of thinking and behaving.

Conduct post-mortems with resources at the end of projects if time allows, as long as it does not interfere with resources doing real work.

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 Please pledge your allegiance to this manifesto and principles, try them out and share comments below on how successful you were.

You are very welcome!