Bad Agile Smells

Over the years, we have spotted several anti-patterns in Agile teams and things we look out for and test early in our engagements with customers. Here are our top ten:

1. There is no Product Owner or there is a Product Owner who lacks the three important attributes—empowered, available to the team, and understands the business.
2. No working software: Either CI/CD is not working sufficiently (or not in place at all) or automated testing is not sufficient. There should always be a working version of the product that can be demonstrated or released at any time. It may not do very much, and the business may want more features before the release, but this has to always be a business decision rather than a technical constraint.
3. Sprints are pre-planned in advance. With variable scope, we need to let the teams control what they load into their sprints. Over time, they will establish metrics on their velocity...