My company hired some Agile coaches to teach us all how to become Agile this year and it's not going well because while management is demanding we all become Agile NOW, they are still putting non-Agile business pressure on us. I'll share details below, but the pain is making me curious: If you're an Agile coach, I realize that you can't do anything about company politics but what really ridiculous things have you witnessed that worked against you (and the team)?

My story is that I work primarily in business development, which is a little like drafting proposals and working to build consensus for them with external customers. So think proposals or contract acquisition. After I draft these proposals, I have to present them at a user group full of external customer clientelle. As I mentioned, we're being pressured to become Agile, but at the same time for this work that I do management is forcing non-Agile things on us. For example:

• The dates of those user groups are set by management and they serve as hard deadlines for when I need to have my proposals done. Hard deadlines imposed by management: NOT Agile

• The agendas are also set by management, so I'm handed a slate of topics that I need to research and write up. Tasks assigned by management: NOT Agile

• We can't start work on the proposals until we learn what they are from management and they never plan ahead enough so we get handed a lot of work to complete in too short a timeline. Enforced timelines: NOT Agile

• Following on the too-short timelines, we can't even get good velocity from story splitting because we're trying to smash 6 months of work into 1 month. We're told that we are now a self-managed Agile team, but they refuse to let us change this and won't listen to us when we try to explain the problems. NOT Agile.

• Our coach advised us a few weeks to to not use percent complete because we're supposed to finish all stories in the sprint (or only pull into the sprint what you can finish), which I'm in agreement with. Today I learned that management wants a percent complete column in our showcase presentations.

So what else have you coaches encountered in the various companies that you consult for?