The unmistakable signs you are participating in Fake Agile theater!

Help, I’m trapped in a swamp of agile mumbo jumbo…

It’s 8.25 AM. I’m 5 minutes early for the Daily Scrum. It’s my first day at this company. I’m invited to attend and observe one of the Daily Scrums as part of my onboarding.

The beginning

Meet Team Spaghetti: the Scrum(?) team that consists solely of software engineers. Just down the hall, I see another group huddling together. That is team Bug Busters, the QA team. In the room next door, I hear muffled laughter from the UX team: Perfect Pixels.

Henry, the Senior Lead Architect, shakes my hand. He is the only architect in the company and is a one-person team: ‘Cloud One Zero’. He joins the Daily Scrum of each team once a week.

The next person to walk over to me is the head of PMO, VP of Product, Director of Agile Transformation Program, and Chief Product Portfolio Owner, Kate, bearing titles worthy of a French renaissance king. Kate stops next to Jim, the Product Owner and ‘Senior’ Scrum Master of Team Spaghetti and Bug Busters.

Jim jokingly hums the Darth Vader Star Wars tune as Henry the architect enters. “Dahh Dah Dah Dum Da Dum Dum Da Dum”.
Oh boy, I’m in for a treat.