RE: Roll Your Own Agile?

I agree strongly with Adam on this.

I see a lot of groups who view agile as a destination rather than a journey. They pick a methodology – it seems always to be Scrum – make some changes up front, and then standardize on that. I used to think that they were totally missing the incremental and experimental nature of agile. I’ve grown a bit more cynical recently, and I think that sometimes it’s just that the comfort of the status quo is more important to management than results.

Charles, to answer your question: I’ve spent a bit of time talking with the folks at Yammer. I don’t know where they started, but they have a very unique process right now that doesn’t look a lot like the methodologies that I’m familiar with.  I also think Etsy has a very interesting perspective.


From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 1:44 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT] Roll Your Own Agile?


Historically all of the “established Agile methods” were “RYOA” before there was an “A.” Before Snowbird they were calling them “lightweight” but nobody really cared for that.

More to the point, I think that any method that has been mindfully applied and adapted to a particular team/product/organizational context will look different from every other one. If your Scrum continues to be by-the-book Scrum after months or years then your retrospectives are probably a waste of time.

One of the problems I have with the current status quo in the Agile consulting industry is that we send out consultants who don’t know the difference between useful adaptations and “not doing it right.” That takes a number of years to cultivate and a deliberate discipline of listening before giving advice.


On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 11:06 AM, Charles Bradley - Professional Scrum Trainer and Coach [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [SCRUMDEVELOPMENT] <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:


I define "Roll Your Own Agile" (RYOA) as roughly ~~ being an attempt at being/doing Agile software development that is not based on(or has a history of) one of the major well defined Agile approaches (XP, Scrum, Crystal, AUP, etc, et al.)... (for purposes of our discussion, let's consider Kanban as a well defined Agile approach -- even tho that might be highly debatable by some-- but let's not get distracted/hijacked by that side conversation!)

For instance, I don't really consider Spottify RYOA since what they do is very close to Scrum, and I believe they started out with Scrum. (CMIIW)

I would assume that anyone out there trying to do RYOA would be basing their approach almost solely on the Agile Manifesto principles and values... a sort of "clean room" approach if you will.  (Obviously all of the well defined approaches probably started as RYOA, but I'm not interested in those)

(Remember, I'm talking only about software teams here)

Has anyone out there in Scrum-land ever seen what you consider to be a good RYOA approach work out well for a company?  Or is RYOA essentially a unicorn?
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Charles Bradley
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