Monday 1 June 2015

Agile isn't...

Meetings

Various agile methodologies outline specific meetings but holding these meetings doesn't make you agile

Capturing requirements as user stories

You aren't writing large requirements documents, you're capturing the details using a form of "As a <user> I want/need <functionality> so that <desired result> This is a good way to focus on functionality that you need for the system (it does have its pitfalls and nuances) but doesn't make you agile

Visually tracking work

Having a board that shows progress of work is really good to help people understand what the team is currently doing and what they've done, similarly charts summarising progress can help people understand trends but doing this doesn't make you agile.

Engineering practice's

Your team practice TDD, pair programming, continuous integration/delivery/deployment, that's awesome and will help you a lot in your day to day work. These practices aren't restricted to agile working so this doesn't make you agile either.

Following an agile methodology

I can hear people say "we do all that, and we have people dedicated to ensuring we follow the process etc" and I would not doubt you but from experience I can still say that even if you are doing everything a methodology says you should do doesn't necessarily make you agile.

So what is agile?

The items listed above all have value in them and I wouldn't suggest you stop if you're doing them already. Just don't think that by doing those you are agile.

In my next post I'll detail what things are common to successful agile implementations that I have seen.

1 comment:

  1. Very true.
    There is this illusion everyone who wear superman tshirt is a super man

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