Agile Edge Cases

http://tiny-giant-books.com/blog/agile-edge-cases/

by DanielBMarkham • 14 years ago

13 5 14 years ago

gpapilion• 14 years ago

I appreciate his point has to buy-in to agile in order to make it work. He doesn't say it, but I expect the same applies for the management team.

blisper• 14 years ago

There are companies out there still sloshing thru waterfalls. They don't know any other way.

But really can you teach me how to breath if I am not already stressed out.? Agile is overkill. Its like teaching Object orientation. How many people still consult the GoF book or talk about patterns? The Java guys are already spent, exhausted.

The buzz industry and book industry are good at making companies and teams feel guilty of ignorance, and help lower their self-esteem.

If you can develop and bolster your common sense, and especially surround yourself with a community that resists bull-shit, buzz-words and fluff-talk, you will be in good shape without needs of all sorts of gurus.

I've been agile all along, my style was agile - but I don't need a brand or a buzzword ninja to help me come to that realization.

Drown out the noise and be more self-aware, and reflective. Buzzwords will only slow you down. "People just love to play with words"...

drewdrewdrew• 14 years ago

Good read but also pretty frustrating. Sure, management has to buy in, but the author portrays a defeatist attitude. The ScrumMaster should help promote and foster agile acceptance.

An agile edge case should be a temporary catalyst to cut teeth and lead to full blown agile adoption, otherwise agile is pointless.

I've been a part of couple of cargo cult teams in the past few years and it's really frustrating to try to get others to think in Agile terms. Having an agile authority to help enforce various agile methodologies is beneficial when sometimes you're ignored as a piddly code monkey.

DanielBMarkham• 14 years ago

...Having an agile authority to help enforce various agile methodologies...

I would be very careful with that position. It presupposes that a centralized knowledge-base is necessary for true adoption. If nothing else, this gives you a central point of failure. Also the word "enforce" gives me the heebie jeebies. Don't like seeing "enforce" and "Agile" used in the same sentence :)

How about his? "Having a trusted outsider to make non-binding recommendations about Agile practices can remind us that if we don't follow Agile practices, we're not going to get any improvement from Agile."

Most Agile adoptions, even ones with Agile authorities, achieve only a 5-10% improvement. This is because it's all too easy to give up on the team and take control, whether you're doing it for Agile or non-Agile reasons. You end up killing the very thing you're trying to promote.

EDIT: The only exception I would make to this is if the team really doesn't understand what they are doing, yet are convinced it's a bad idea. In that scenario, usually a coach or somebody can help teach the team (by insisting they try something) until they know enough to make their own decisions.

peteretep• 14 years ago

If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy an article I wrote:

http://www.writemoretests.com/2011/09/agile-scrum-delivering...

Agile Edge Cases

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