

What's Agile To You? - DanielBMarkham
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/10/whats-agile-to.php

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prat
"iterative and incremental projects" that's it.

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cmoses
I think Markham makes a good contrast between Agile with a capital 'a'
invoking the marketing masses and high book sales, and agile with a lowercase
'a' alluding to simply quick and coordinated movement by a team. Markham would
agree agile is different for every company, but I'd like to point out that if
you want to implement agile for a student team of developers working on a
software product, your timeboxes are stretched out--so you're still using
agile but you make it work for your developers.

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DanielBMarkham
I'd like to add a little here.

Agile, whether big or little 'a', is about some kind of stressors and some
kind of adapting to meet those stressors. I described those stressors in
general terms as "business value" -- making something quickly that people want
-- but you can fit a lot of things into "business value"

For instance, on a student project, those stressors can be incremental
timeboxes (if you have 3 months, why not have 2-week or 1-week cycles with a
demo to one of your peer groups? After all, there's a difference between a
build/demo iteration and a release iteration)

What I'm getting at is that you're always making some kind of sub-optimal
trade-off for the greater good. That's why agile is so tough in schools and
large organizations -- the lack of stressors means a lack of impetus to adapt.
Many times the first sprint looks just like the last one, or you stretch your
sprints to meet the class deadline, or you slipping schedules is routine, etc.

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cmoses
Nice point. But I would argue that the stressors are the same kinds of
deadlines as you would see in any professional organization. From my
experience working on a student developer team (attempting to use agile), the
reason it doesn't work in a school setting is the lack of daily updates and
meetings among team members since it's hard to coordinate the schedules any
decent-sized team of students and to convince them to reorganize their
workload to meet the weekly or bi-monthly deadlines. The worst case scenario
is a lower grade on your project, rather than the stressor of losing your
bonus or worse--getting fired.

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DanielBMarkham
I think I was unclear. Student agile and big-corp agile can have a lot in
common.

In really large organizations, developers can be multi-allocated to several
different development teams and be working on 5 or 6 projects at the same
time. In addition, slipping schedules is the norm. And you can have multiple
channels of managers, making accountability problematic. So the stressors
don't always apply at big companies either.

That's why I use the startup metaphor. In the startup world, you produce value
or you die.

There are techniques to use, of course. You can insist on daily stand-ups and
an hour or two of co-located time per day -- to the point of refusing to be on
the team if it's not done. But that gets into a whole other area of courage
and agile teams which is probably another thread.

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garethm
I still believe that the best definition of what agile is is to be found in
the agile manifesto: <http://www.agilemanifesto.org/>

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DanielBMarkham
The agile manifesto is a marketing tool used to sell consulting services and
books. Those who adhere to it quote it like it was some sort of revelation
from on high. A new ten commandments. A great religious insight.

Nope, I'm not a fan, although I agree with the items. Software development
does not need manifestos any more than it needs new methodologies. What it
needs -- what it has always needed -- is pragmatism. Where the application of
the manifesto is pragmatic, it is good. Where it is dogmatic, it is bad.

So I respectfully disagree. I'm just not a platitude kind of guy.

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ZeroGravitas
How is your comment any less platitudinous than the agile manifesto?

You could call it the Pragmatic Manifesto:

* What software development needs, is what it has always needed: pragmatism!

* Where it is pragmatic, it is good!

* Where it is not-pragmatic (dogmatic), it is bad!

Making a stand for _pragmatism_ , and against _dogmatism_ is basically saying
nothing because what you define as pragmatic can be called dogmatic by others
and vice versa. It's politician speak, using a vague word with inherent
positive connotations to describe your own actions, and one with negative
connotations for anything you dislike.

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DanielBMarkham
LOL -- the new slogan is that there are no slogans!

I see your point, but pragmatism has a lot more depth than simply being an
adjective and the opposite of something else. "How to do stuff" is a
philosophical exercise (sorry to go long here) and like all philosophical
exercises, there are many schools of thought. After looking at all the camps,
I'll go with Peirce and Dewey, who, looking at the field, said basically "so
what?" "What's it mean to me right now?"

Now maybe the pragmatic school of philosophy has been a con job all along --
if so, hey, the money is good -- but I think there's a bit more to it than
simply substituting one slogan for another.

But I loved your comment!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey>

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jister
Over the years I've read about agile...it's more like a religion now, really.

