The End of an Easy Era: How Agile crushed the money machine

Agile became mainstream especially between 2013-2015. It ruined my money making machine and made my life hard for some time. But Agile is just another model to be gamed and won.

I fondly remember the good old days, up until 2014, when projects were a breeze. Clients would throw money at me without batting an eye, and I’d just smile, nod, and cash those sweet checks. It was like having my own personal ATM.

"OMG honey, you have loads of money! Can you pay for all my dreams now?"

But then, everything changed. Suddenly, around 2014-2015, projects got invaded by a new generation of members who actually knew what they were doing. I’m not sure if they all graduated from the same school or landed on Earth at the same time (just kidding, but it felt like it). But one thing was certain: these guys were smart, and they always seemed to be men (no offense to the ladies).

This new breed of team members knew their stuff:

• They understood the project’s actual goals.

• They had learned the domain inside out.

• They were familiar with modern technology stacks.

• They had real-world experience.

• They knew how projects should be run.

• And, worst of all, they were usually around 30-35 years old, which meant they weren’t naive newbies who’d swallow my nonsense.

I must have missed the memo, but this stereotype appeared in every single project I worked on during that time. It was like “game over” for me. These guys had one crucial skill: no tolerance for BS.

Clients really started to wise up. They began adopting Agile principles like:

• Sprint planning

• Daily meetings (or as I liked to call them, “dailys”)

• Git (or Microsoft’s equivalent, which was actually pretty good, but died off after 2016)

Things like CI/CD pipelines were on the horizon, but they hadn’t yet become mainstream. The entire Agile approach basically destroyed my ten-year-old work habits and the ease with which I could juggle multiple projects simultaneously.

For six months, it was tough. I had to adapt. Gone were the days of lame excuses and the waterfall model. I used to produce design documents and project plans, but now I had to get creative. I started planning how to inflate individual JIRA tasks to make them seem more daunting than they actually were. I’d chain related tasks so I could work on one entirety, instead of working on multiple different parts of the project that would require actual dedication.

In daily meetings, I learned to talk about JIRA ticket numbers instead of their names. I’d say something like, “I worked on task ABC-999 yesterday, it’s looking good, no issues, writing unit tests next.” People attending the dailies wouldn’t be able to follow my work that well. I’d split tasks into smaller ones so it seemed like there was a good velocity. And I’d take extra managerial tasks from the board that weren’t actual work you could track on Git or the velocity board.

There were tons of ways to game the system, and I became an expert at running the Ripoff Lifecycle Agile (TM) version. It was a delicate balance between looking busy and actually doing some real work. But hey, it became harder, but I was still able to make 30K a month!