Agile Anti-patterns


An anti-pattern is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern).

Agile anti-patterns:

  • Longer iterations are introduced
  • Re-planning during iterations regularly occurs
  • The sprint backlog is unrefined and stories are not actionable
  • Unclear or missing user story acceptance criteria
  • Unclear or missing definition of done
  • Work is assigned to developers rather than developers volunteering for work
  • The product owner does not effectively communicate vision and “why it matters” contributing to team demotivation
  • Workarounds are accepted instead of fearless problem solving
  • The team frequently under-delivers on committed stories in the sprint
  • Regular re-allocation of team members (traditional project management resource allocation where the people are brought to the work rather than the work brought to the team)
  • Frequent prolonged broken builds
  • Defect rates are climbing
  • Daily stand-up meetings regularly exceed 15 minutes and demotivate the team
  • Retrospectives are skipped or become a comfortable routine
  • The Scrum master is the team lead or manager
  • Less pair programming and/or pairs rarely switches
  • The whole team is getting more quiet and avoiding conflict
  • Silent agreement sets in. Issues are ignored and best practices are skipped without discussion or objection

What agile anti-patterns have you seen?


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