The day the agility was proclaimed a major business cause, the intention was clear: simplifying, fluidifying, empowering. In practice, the teams have heard “permanent upset”, “abstruse vocabulary” and “meetings every morning”. The initial enthusiasm has turned into a collective sigh. Because between the promises of responsiveness and the realities on the ground, the misunderstanding has never been really lifted. And rather than becoming a source of performance, the agile method is sometimes experienced as a slightly heavy role -playing game.
Kanban has become a forgotten wall fresco
You thought you were driving a short cycles project, you are witnessing the slow agony of the Kanban. This painting, supposed to be alive, is now decorated with frozen tasks, some of which date back to the time when the trainee was still dealing with their update. Backlog is no longer a list of priorities, but an archaeological inventory. The columns have kept their inspiring titles, but their content now resembles a pious vows inventory.
No one knows what’s in progress, nor what is over. On the other hand, everyone agrees that it will be necessary “Clean it one day”. Each abandoned task becomes a totem of passivity, and each column a failed promise of transparency. The white wall so exciting at its beginnings has become a silent reminder that the initial energy flew off with the first load climb.
Ceremonies have become closed clubs
Ceremonies exist. There are even many. But mysteriously, your presence is never required. The team invokes autonomy, self-organization, and sometimes even the need to “sanctuarize a space of sincerity”. Translation: You have become a methodological disturbance factor. The only thing that seems to shake these rituals is your remarkable absence … but never commented.
Each stage point request is postponed, each refocusing attempt is perceived as a regression to an outdated hierarchical model. You are tolerated, but decorative. Your reading of the last dashboard is polite, but useless. By avoiding conflicts, the team ended up avoiding formal communication in short.
The facilitator no longer facilitates anything
The former project manager was renamed facilitator. Officially, he animates, he supports, he fluidifies. Concretely, he undergoes. He can no longer decide, he can no longer prioritize, and he cannot climb blockages either without “breaking the group dynamics”. Authority has been dissolved in an ocean of non -directive good will.
Result: he spends his days arbitrating conflicts without being able to rely on something other than collective benevolence and a smiley in Slack. The role has gained neutrality, but lost all efficiency. It has become the silent orchestra of a ship without a compass. His post now combines coordination, diplomacy and strategic invisibility.
The user is “in the center”, but in dotted
The customer is at the center of all presentations. We pay tribute to him in each kick-off. It is said that he is involved in each stage. But no one has called her for weeks. It is only a floating concept, a theoretical benchmark to justify choices which, in reality, fall under internal culture. We talk about him with respect, but without interaction.
The end user often discovers the result at the same time as you, and his feedback is collected in a spreadsheet that is never reopened. He has become a fictitious character who is summoned to each Sprint Review to validate already taken decisions. Paradoxically, the more we evoke his voice, the less we really listen to him.
The sprint has become an endless tunnel
The sprint was supposed to offer a clear, predictable, clocked rhythm. He turned into a blurred tunnel, without a specific outing point. The deliverables are completed “soon”, the outbuildings are “in clarification” and the blocking points “are part of the process”. Each planning looks like an exercise in style under time constraint.
The retrospective, formerly thought of as a moment of truth, has become an empty formality, concluded by “we would have to improve on this” without anything changing. Time is flowing, but no one knows what tempo. The sprint has no more finish line, only suspension points. The velocity is measured, but its meaning escapes everyone.
The tool is still there. Used per person.
The follow -up tool, deployed after three weeks of benchmark and two training sessions, sank into collective forgetting. Officially, it is still in place. Unofficially, everyone records their work elsewhere, in a personal file or on a flying sheet. The table is updated only on the eve of the demonstrations.
The interface, however supposed to centralize everything, no longer reflects anything usable. But no member of the team wants to be the one who admits it. So we all continue together to pretend to believe it. The tool becomes a sacred object that we no longer consult, but that we respect remotely. The single standard has become a team folklore.
There are many meetings. The action, less.
The meetings have multiplied, and with them, the strange feeling of being more often talking about work than doing so. The Daily, planned to last fifteen minutes, often exceeds forty-five. Each details tasks misunderstood by others, in a methodological fog that borders on the absurd. Everyone listens, but no one hears.
The effect produced is counter-intuitive: transparency generates confusion, the frequency feeds inertia, and feedback becomes a series of polished euphemisms. The schedule is full, the content is hollow, and everyone leaves the meeting with a diffuse feeling of having lost a quarter of the morning. Agility becomes a rhythmic! Static stand-up rate.
