There are lot of answers to this question and I have only posted based on my experiences.

I am hoping for people to share any from there own experience any which I have missed out of my list. This allows for me to learn from your experiences also. So without hesitation lets begin.

Why do a lot of developers dislike agile?

Firstly agile is a super broad term and often people have issues with some parts of the methodology more than others

For example:

Most developers agree on continuous integration and automated testing being of value

Less developers see merit in pair programming

A big concern I have seen is the time spent in meetings.

It's a fair concern, the ideal team size is somewhere around 8. That would mean in a 2 week sprint:

Daily stand up = 8*15 mins * 5 = 600 minutes

Sprint planning = 8*45 = 360 minutes

Backlog grooming 8*120 = 960 minutes

Sprint Demo = 8*45 mins = 360 minutes

Sprint retrospective = 8*45 mins = 360 minutes

This would total: 2640 minutes or 44 man hours of time spent on meetings in 2 weeks with conservative estimates on time.

I think we can all agree this is quite a significant amount.

I have experienced many concerns against the stakeholders prioritization choices

Timescales are squeezed

By design agile methodologies squeeze timescales to reduce ineffeciencies and improve responsiveness of the business.

Stress levels rise

Due to always needing to release and demonstrate

Sometimes MVP’s are not up to scratch but are still released and shown to many people.

This can cause anxiety over peoples opinion on the poor quality of the work delivered.

Project managers are often replaced with scrum masters.

These two skillsets are not replaceable one for one, they have subtle but significant differences.

Lack of need to communicate outside the local team meaning isolation and internal group think

This can also lead to conflict within the organisation as a culture of us vs them can emerge

Feeling like a cog in a machine

Plan, Do, Check & Act

Plan, Do, Check & Act

Plan, Do, Check & Act

Plan, Do, Check & Act

Repeating this sequence ad-infinitum can make developers feel like they are in a rut or just using up time like on a hamster wheel.

Technical leads having limited influence

Often product owners and stake holders are given more weight when making decisions and what they decide is generally final and overruling of the technical lead.

Product owners have limited control and bow to stakeholders

This can lead to short term thinking in the perceived hope of obtaining customer satisfaction

MVP and lean delivery seen as not high enough quality product

This can make developers not feel proud of the work they are producing

Developers lose commitment as they don't feel identified with the work or business

This can propagate into a lack of vision or warm feelings for the long term

These lead to concerns over job security

Cross functional teams also reduce job security

The development team can often feel inadequate for not meeting the perceived potential.

The team is often under budget or resource constraints but are consistently reminded of what there capped velocity is via information radiators

The constant search for looking for defects, waste or errors can aid developers in forgetting about the positives

Developers can also dislike the complexity of the process

Agile is quite involved, collaborative and requires communication. Developers in the past have tended to be introverted in nature.

Some compare the current agile methodology to waterfall and would just prefer to receive a specification and task list and be left to do the work.

It is often difficult to trust the product owner when they dont have direct access to the end customers.

I have seen in big business to business sales organisations the product owner has limited access to the customer base and likely never even speaks with someone who uses the software.

This undermines there credibility and the effectiveness of the agile model.

I am sure there are plenty more and if you feel I have missed some please leave it in the comments so I can learn also :)

These would be the most common I have experienced.

Hopefully it helps

Good Luck

Oliver Dolan

www.oliverdolan.com