Are We Doing Agile… Just Because?
At a glance, everything looks right. The team does daily stand-ups. You sprint every two weeks. Retros happen like clockwork. Jira boards are tidy. There’s a burndown chart. Velocity is tracked.
But… something feels off.
You’re doing all the “Agile” things yet progress is slow. Nothing changes after retros. Team energy is low. And worst of all, the customer’s voice seems to have faded from the room.
One developer captured this experience perfectly in a Reddit thread titled “Are we doing Agile… just because?”:
“In my current job, we follow Agile—or at least that’s what everyone says. We have stand-ups every morning, sprints every two weeks, retros, the whole thing. At first, I thought it was great. Structure is good, right? But over time, it started to feel like we were just going through the motions. Standups turned into status meetings. Retros became a place where people complained, but nothing ever changed. We talked about velocity and burn-down charts more than we talked about what the customer actually needed. Honestly, I feel like we’re just doing Agile because it’s what everyone else is doing. Because it looks organized. But somewhere along the way, we lost the why behind it.”
That’s Agile Theater, when the Agile playbook is followed to the letter, but none of the intended value materializes.
It’s more common than teams like to admit. But the good news? Once you see it, you can fix it.
In this post, we’ll walk through five signs your team may be performing Agile without making real progress and how to shift from performance to purpose.
1. Stand-ups Feel Performative and Unhelpful
What it looks like:
Team members go around in a circle sharing yesterday/today/blocker updates, but no one seems more informed or aligned after. Updates sound robotic. Blockers don’t get resolved. The meeting ends, and everyone just… leaves.
Why it's a problem:
Stand-ups are supposed to be quick but also useful. When they lose meaning, they become agile theater. Teams start treating them as rituals to get through rather than tools to align and adapt.
How to fix it:
- Bring relevance back: Encourage updates that are meaningful to the team. It’s fine to say “continuing yesterday’s task”—but if you’re blocked, speak up.
- Shift from broadcast to awareness: Instead of “reporting,” think of it as building a shared understanding of what’s happening.
- Try async: Tools like Slack bots or Rally to move your standup async.
- Watch for signals: Are people zoning out? Are updates consistently too vague or too detailed? These are signs to change your standup format not drop it, but make it fit for your team
2. Retrospectives Never Lead to Change
What it looks like:
Retros are held at the end of every sprint, but the same complaints keep popping up. There are lots of sticky notes and venting but few outcomes. Action items, if created, aren’t followed up on.
Why it's a problem:
Retrospectives are a feedback loop for your team’s process. When they fail to result in change, your team misses opportunities to improve and starts seeing retros as just another meeting.
How to fix it:
- Create trackable actions: Use a “Top 2 Actions” rule, limit to one or two high-impact, clearly owned action items per retro.
- Close the loop: Revisit past action items in the next planning session. Did they happen? If not, why not?
- Use a shared doc or tool: Document themes and actions so they’re visible.
- Focus the scope: Try themed retros (e.g., “What slowed us down?”) to streamline your feedback.
3. Stories Are Just Tasks in Disguise
What it looks like:
The team writes stories in “As a user…” format, but they don’t reflect actual user needs. They’re really implementation tasks, shoehorned into Agile syntax. Story splitting happens to fit capacity, not logic.
Why it's a problem:
User stories are meant to express user value. When they’re faked, teams optimize for the mechanics of work (what to do) instead of the meaning of it (why we’re doing it).
How to fix it:
- Use the INVEST principle: Ensure stories are Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable.
- Re-center the user: Bring product managers and designers into story writing. Use real feedback, support tickets, or research to shape the backlog.
- Map stories to outcomes: If a story doesn’t change behavior or perception for a user, ask: why are we building this?
4. Velocity is Prioritized Over Value
What it looks like:
The team obsessively tracks velocity and burndown charts. Discussions in sprint reviews focus on “points completed” rather than whether the right things were built. Planning becomes a numbers game.
Why it's a problem:
Velocity is a tool, not a goal. When you chase points instead of outcomes, you lose sight of value delivery. Worse, you may start gaming the system, padding estimates or slicing stories unnaturally to hit numbers.
How to fix it:
- Balance delivery with impact: Ask in reviews, What did we learn? What did the customer gain?
- Connect sprint goals to outcomes: Tie work back to product OKRs, not just backlog churn.
- Use metrics wisely: Keep tracking velocity, but also include qualitative metrics—like customer satisfaction, user adoption, or time-to-feedback.
5. Agile Is a Checklist, Not a Mindset
What it looks like:
Teams follow all the Agile rituals to the letter, but nothing ever changes. Feedback is ignored. Experiments aren’t run. Sprints feel more like boxes to check than opportunities to iterate.
Why it's a problem:
Agile isn’t a fixed methodology it’s a mindset of continuous learning and customer-centric iteration. When teams treat it like a script, they miss the chance to adapt and grow.
How to fix it:
- Reintroduce flexibility: Challenge rituals. Ask the team every few months, Are these still helping us?
- Encourage psychological safety: Make it safe to question the process. Process ownership should be shared—not handed down.
- Focus on principles, not practices: Revisit the Agile Manifesto. Do your ceremonies serve those values? If not, change them.
The Real Cost of Agile Theater
It’s not just a waste of time—it’s a loss of trust, engagement, and alignment. When Agile becomes theater, teams burn out doing “work about work,” while actual customer problems sit unsolved.
Agile Theater is often unintentional. It happens slowly: a process copied from another org, a stand-up that becomes stale, a backlog that grows out of touch. But the good news is, it’s reversible.
Start with one sign. Talk about it with your team. Ask, Is this still helping us? If not, what would?
You don’t need a full Agile reboot. You just need to stop acting—and start asking the right questions.
Want to Take This Further?
Escaping Agile Theater isn’t about doing more Agile. It’s about reconnecting with the why behind every stand-up, sprint, and story: clarity, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
That’s exactly where Rally comes in.
Rally helps teams move beyond the motions and get back to real progress. It supports async standups that surfaces blockers without dragging down your team’s focus or filling calendars with unnecessary meetings. When you use it to hold async Retrospectives, they result in actionable takeaways that you can track and follow up on, so problems actually get fixed instead of repeated.
Its capacity planning tools make sure sprints are grounded in reality, helping you avoid overcommitment and burnout. And with built-in chat, documents, and diagrams directly linked to work items, Rally keeps conversations focused and in context. No more sifting through Slack or Email to figure out where decisions were made.
If your team’s stuck checking Agile boxes but not moving the needle, Rally helps you focus and reconnect with the work that matters.