James Turner

In politics, the term RINO is used to refer to a candidate who is “Republican in Name Only,” i.e., claiming the mantle of the party, but not conforming to the platform or belief system. In software development, there’s a similar phenomenon: companies that claim to embrace agile development principles, but really don’t understand agile. They’re Agile in Name Only (AINO).

I’ve written before about “waterfall with a crunchy agile shell,” the problem that if you are trying to control all three of the variables (time, features, resources), you can’t really do agile. Agile acknowledges the uncertainty in development estimates, and requires the team to stay “ready to ship,” so that when the decision is made to pull the trigger on a release, all the work done to date can be easily consolidated and shipped. But focusing on keeping shippable units in shippable shape only makes sense if you also embrace the idea of frequent releases, and putting only in the release what fits in the bucket.

In contrast, a company that’s agile in name only will cling to a distant release date and a laundry list of features, but still insist on short sprints and closing stories. At this point, the benefit of short sprints isn’t for the developers or the team, it’s for management, because it lets them focus on their burn-down charts, and chart the progress toward that eventual release that may be a year away.
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