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Monday, June 15, 2009

My two cents on Agile adoption

Agile is like teenage sex, everybody is talking about it, most are not doing it and those that are doing it, are doing it wrong.
paraphrase of James O. Coplien 1
So a guy - let's call him John - wants his company to be hip'n'cool and be Agile. He goes by the book, put some things into work and yeeeeaahh.. nooo.. - people scream, tools don't work, tests breaks, client's pissed.. He begins ranting on Agile being unable to deliver him its expected awesomeness.. trying harder and harder.. right until it breaks completely.

Yeeah...

You know Albert Einstein was a pretty smarty guy? He actually said:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
That is exaaactly what John is doing. I am honestly amazed how vast majority of people approach this problem. It may be characterized as: "Doesn't work? Let's ditch it". I mean.. WTF? Are they really that lazy to make any alterations? It's either that or they thought they'd be anointed by Holy Ghost with Agile skills.. I mean be reasonable you don't expect to become Software Architect one month after graduation...

However there's still a question to answer: "What might be a better solution than moving back to RUP" (which is bad and stinks and even IBM knows it :P).

You know how TDD cycle looks like don't you:

What if I've shown you something quite similar:

First - move slowly, take small steps. Otherwise you won't know what works and what doesn't, you will overwhelm your team2 with too much change and slow down development process down to nothing.

Second - use feedback! You're getting negative - may it be - in TDD red tests have the same value as green ones.

Third - don't expect to become Agile star overnight.

It requires time.
It requires effort.
It may deliver profits.
If you're not determined to take a risk don't put blame on a process. Just admit it.



1. From his superb presentation on DCI.

2. "Gently introduce change to a team. Don't expect things to suddenly change overnight." Ryan XXX [don't know last name]

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