Why Agile projects fail ?

Sometimes Agile projects fail, below the 5 most common reasons :

1) Internal politics or HR conflicts

Agile projects are built on a collaboration principle. If there are conflicts in the team, or in the company, the Agile project is in trouble !

One possible root cause for team conflicts are undefined roles and responsibilities (most important are Product o

wner and Scrum master roles)

In doubt what these roles mean ? please, ask your Who makes a good product owner or a good scrum master and check this with your own agile project team.

Some tips here.

2) No Continuous Integration Environment and no Configuration Management tool

Setting up a Continuous Integration Environment is essential for everyone who wants to be Agile and work in short iterations (like with the Scrum technique).

The main objective for a such a system is to frequently build the source code committed by developers (each night for example). Each iteration is automatically built and tested as soon as possible integration errors.

This approach should also work with a strong Configuration Management tool.

3) Too much Expectations

Even if Agile project management is a best practice for executing your IT project, this cannot be used without preparing it. For example, classic methods such as WBS or Estimates calculation for building a realistic schedule and costs are still necessary before launching the project or program.

4) Operations are not Development (think Devops)

This is one of the most important causes of failure. Developing is fantastic 🙂 but you also have to take into account :

• Effective, collaborative and productive relationship between development teams and operation teams
• Deploying your project in an operationnal environment !

5) Methodology is bad interpreted 

Self learning is a good thing but sometimes, we can interpret methods, terms, roles.

Bad roles for a Product Owner or a Scrum Master could be worse than using a classic project management organisation.

Sometimes, companies who want to implement an Agile Project realize that they don’t know what to do with the old Management organisation. Then, to avoid internal conflicts, they prefer creating intermediate roles…

Adapt your company organisation before changing your project methodology !

And don’t forget, everyone in the organisation should work in the same way. Don’t mix Waterfall and Agile in the same project. It”s preferable to stay in waterfall method if your company is not ready to change.