So many people I know claim to be doing agile, and are crafting software, and whatever. Unfortunately, from my experience it is clear that while everyone like saying they do stuff, they aren’t actually doing it.

Going through the motions, instead of understanding what you’re doing, is basically useless. The only way to get better at something is through introspection, that requires you to be aware of your actions and the wanted outcomes.

Some examples:

Do the people on your team know why you have to stand up at the daily standup? Are members told what kind of information to share and what not? Or is it simply 10 minutes of everyone not listening?

Does your team pull up estimates for tasks? Why? Do you look at the estimates at the end of an iteration? Will you cut features in case the estimations show you won’t complete all the tasks?

Are your automatic tests valuable? I’ve seen mountains of useless tests that do not aid refactoring, super slow or simply just don’t really test anything. If people don’t understand why they’re writing them, how can you expect them to write good ones?

Are your retrospectives just 30 minutes that you’re waiting to get over with, with basically no action items that change things?

There’s a reason software developers have grown to hate process, and it’s because most of the times process is just that, stuff that needs to be done without a lot of benefit or apparent logic. Make sure you and your team know why you’re doing stuff, that’s the only way to get better.