Going Agile Thursday, 25 June 2009
Posted by bobbins in workplace.trackback
So, I’m back again. Still in the same job – for now – the Bell Curve hasn’t claimed me just yet, nor has the recession. Needless to say our Lords And Masters have used all the media hype as an excuse for a pay freeze. I guess that makes me luckier than the poor buggers that work for BA, but after 5 years of not keeping up with inflation I’m still allowed a minimoan, aren’t I?
So what’s happened since I’ve been away?
We’ve officially Gone Agile.
This is the latest fad in software development. It means the bosses get to make us deliver something every two weeks. It’s called “sprinting”. Every day we get to have a “scrum” in the morning, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. We don’t have to all get into a sweaty group hug or anything. We just sit about in a meeting room and say what we did yesterday, what we’ll be doing today, and list all the things that are likely to stop us from achieving anything (we’re not allowed to complain about having too many meetings, however).
In short – Agile is even more fucked up than the last “methodology” we supposedly used. I feel several rants coming on…
Having been around the methodology ‘block’ a few times myself over the last 25 years I can endorse your skepticism. Whatever happened to Information Engineering, RAD, Prince (2), DSDM, and the list goes on and on. However, I have had the chance to witness Agile practiced without all the hype and am starting to believe there is something very different here. Have as many SCRUM meetings as you want but i have found the interaction and iteration of Agile is the gold nugget. It really helps fix the inability of the business to articulate what they want and allows us (IT) to meet their expectations in a much more timely manner, only delivering what is important.
I suspect the problem is more down to the way it has been implemented where I work – our internal customers in particular are less than enthusiastic about losing their little spec-writing empires
It’s early days though, but so far I’m seriously underwhelmed. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment though!