James Shore wrote a great post titled The Decline and Fall of Agile and I have to say that I agree with him 100%.
In my experiences I've...
Helped convert a company to a more Agile approach.. but without firmly understanding it.
In this instance we turned out being very lucky because our implementation of Agile was working pretty good when I left. A large part of this was because we had a great Customer Proxy, we were already the testers (Cross-functional team) and we were all seated together so communication was great as well. At the end of the day we had the stuff that James points out is important. I think it also helped that we were a small team. If we saw a problem we made changes to fix it immediately. I think at some point I'll have to sit down with some of the people I know who still work there and get their view of how Agile is working/not working now.
Worked at various companies that were trying to be Agile.. but without firmly understanding it.
In these instances things did not turn out well at all. Q&A was a completely separate entity. The Customer Proxy (on projects that had one) was a shared resource (this NEVER works). Sometimes we've still been able to pull something Agile(ish) off which has still been better then the typical 'Get It Done' methodology but was still nowhere near Scrum. Other times all hope has been abandoned and the project reverted to 'Get It Done' (and loses developers at a good rate).
Why Is It So?
I think the big problem is that Agile has gotten to the point where large corporations are using it. These companies for the most part have not been Agile in 50+ years. Getting changes put in place to support a proper Agile methodology is a huge battle that requires a proper Scrum Master but one isn't being brought in.
My personal response to all this is two fold. The first step is going to be to become a Scrum Master. To fill in the gaps in my information on how Scrum is supposed to work. The second step is to be more diligent in future contracts. To ensure that if the company is trying to be Agile that they appear to have an understanding of what that really means. If they don't then I'll see if I can help them come to an understanding as to value of being properly prepared vs the dangers of running in headstrong. My time is too valuable to waste on another Agile(ish) attempt. I want to work with companies that want to succeed.
Agile is NOT easy. You get what you put in. It's time for us to start reminding people of this..
posted @ Saturday, November 15, 2008 10:21 AM