1. They’re not comfortable with change.
2. They don’t feel their voices are being heard over those of the development team.
3. They, or someone they know, didn’t get what they wanted in an agile development project.
4. Documentation is the go-to method for butt-covering, and lean requirements make them feel exposed.
5. They’ve learned to anticipate emergencies on release days due to poor version control.
6. Real-time decisioning is inconvenient when paired with all-day conference calls, wall-to-wall meetings and heavy travel schedules.
7. They’ve been preached at by a well-meaning Agile zealot.
8. They’ve afraid it’s flavor-of-the-month, like other “revolutionary” new processes that blazed in and sputtered out over the years.
9. They’ve lost faith in the backlog – it’s the place projects go to live with Jesus.
10. They think “collaboration” is Latin for “I don’t get to drive”.
Hi Peter,I could be misinterpreting the itennt of your post but it feels to me that most startup business are already practicing agile techniques possibly without even knowing it. If they aren’t they likely won’t be in business long. For example we are a software and services startup – we use agile to develop our software, but I would argue that our entire business is being evolved the same way – iterative development. We reassess market conditions constantly, look at strategy quarterly, experiment with new pricing models, new services etc etc.We are now actually even trying to take some concrete concepts from agile software development and deploy them across the business (of course we are adapting them accordingly). for example – we are now taking the concept of a morning scrum/morning stand-up and moving that to every functional area of the business. Of course some of the details don’t carry over well from development to other groups, however the core tenants of rapid communication, shared commitments and self organization apply to all.In the end – Agile is a mindset not a process or method. many forget that.Cheers,Kevintwitter: kevnd