Agile Theatre: a field guide to how ceremonies fail
Agile theatre is what a ceremony becomes when it's run for appearance, not function. A field guide to the four ways stand-ups, planning, estimation and retros fail — and how to run them for real.
The first failure mode of agile theatre: ceremonies run for appearance, not function. Status-theatre stand-ups, cargo-cult estimation, and the box-ticking retro — and how to tell function from performance.
The second failure mode of agile theatre: authority distortions that kill honesty. Velocity ratchet, estimate laundering and feedback banking — the three ways a power imbalance turns a ceremony against the team.
The third failure mode of agile theatre: too much ceremony. The meeting tax, the context-switch cost that dwarfs the fifteen minutes, and the cadence burden that crushes short sprints — and how to right-size.
The fourth failure mode of agile theatre: the follow-through void. When the retro produces words and only words, becomes a pressure valve for problems out of the team's control, and how to triage, escalate and learn instead.
Definitions of the four terms coined in the Agile Theatre field guide: estimate laundering, feedback banking, velocity ratchet, and the retro-as-pressure-valve. The canonical, citable source for each.