Songs: Agile

notes / gigs / releases

There's a word on everybody's lips
It's Agile
All the fun and funky kids
Use Agile
Cos when we muck the whole thing up
We can call it Minimum Viable Product
If you don't like it - tough luck
It's Agile

We'll fake User Acceptance Tests
With Agile
Promise lots, deliver less
With Agile
No need to plan, no need to think
We'll fix it in a two week sprint
It won't work but it will be quick
With Agile

We're talking shite but we don't care
With Agile
Because we have our meetings without chairs
With Agile
The Project Team say that'll do
We'll not be here for BAU
Let's raise a ticket to screw you
With Agile

Endemic in Society
Is Agile
No need to do things properly
With Agile
Just swank about with confidence
Leave others to clean up your mess
In case you haven't guessed it yet
That's Agile
And it's bollocks

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing



For those lucky enough not to know, Agile is a project management methodology originally designed to help software companies develop and ship new products quickly. It is a perfectly respectable and sensible idea when applied correctly, which involves constant re-evaluation and interaction with project stakeholders.

HOWEVER, as I have discovered over the past few years, it is also used entirely wrongly by large institutions and companies as a way to "deliver" the minimum necessary product quickly, cheaply and badly. Companies and Institutions are NOT software houses and the things they use Agile for are NOT software applications.

More generally people say "We need to be AGILE!" when they mean "I have heard this word and am going to use it to excuse everything we do", and then decide that they're going to do EVERYTHING in a Two Week Sprint (i.e. a mad dash to BODGE something in an entirely spurious fortnight) whether it's even vaguely relevant or not.

It is, as the song says, BOLLOCKS, and happily it does very much seem to be falling out of favour recently. If this song can help push it into the ABYSS then I shall consider my job done!