Agile Is Not the Easy Way Out (But It Does Work)

Rebecca Parsons

Tale of Two Toy Castles

from Rich Hickey and Neal Ford. Metaphor to keep in mind during the talk...

The Knitted and Lego Castles

Yes, you can buy that on Amazon...

Think about this in context of team, system, and business model...

Agile Principles

like transparency, reflection, and feedback...

Inform the practices

like pair programming, CI, standups, retrospectives, etc...

Resulting in an approach that is

Disciplined

Sustainable

Grounded in Reality

and Effective

For each of these, I’ll describe principles and practices that relate... show how and why they’re not easy but why they contribute to success.Many items could appear in different headings and they inter-relate.That’s why principles matter....

Continual refactoring

Pair programming, testing and continuous integration

Unambiguous definition of done

Cavalier attitudes can not survive (no place to hide)

Standups and retrospectives

Disciplined

Ironic that some orgs feel agile only applies with talented developers but also accuse devs of wanting agile so they can be reckless

Processes together form a rigorous structure within

which to work

Broken builds, style monitors, continuous peer review, etc....

Scope control limits waste

Not just iterative (mini-waterfalls)

Balance of short and long term

No need for heroes

The Agile Contract

Sustainable

Scrum as mini-waterfalls

The team selects the processes, empowering them

and making it sustainable

Collective ownership of project and process allows team to buy in and look to make things work over the long run for all stakeholders. Broad team means broad ownership and shared success.

Adaptive planning, evolutionary architecture, emergent design...

Yesterday’s weather

Clarity of actual progress

We’re not just order takers

Actually adaptive/evolutionary everything

Grounded in Reality

Opportunities come from being responsive

Embracing and exploiting opportunities as they appear and dealing with issues as

they arise

How much more effective can you be?

Tale of Two Toy Castles Revisited

The Knitted and Lego Castles

Elegant, unified whole, but unravels with change. Again, team, systems and business models. We live in a world that requires us to change.

Questions?