My mind wonders…

Zealot isn’t a word that you (by that I mean me…) come across too much but I’ve encountered it twice recently. I’ve been speaking to a couple of the senior management team about how I can sell Agile throughout the organisation and both of them have commented on the language that I use, one going as far telling me that I can sometimes come across as a zealot when I talk about Agile to people and if I remember rightly, the other told me that I can appear to be a fundamentalist.

Whilst neither of these descriptions are great from a personal perspective, the feedback is obviously useful and if I’m honest, it’s fair comment.

I want to see Agile principles and their associated practices adopted across the organisation, I think they offer a lot, both to the business and to the developers involved. Having given the feedback consideration I went away and thought about what I stand for and how I can communicate that to people in a manner that won’t alienate them to me.

My starting point was to think about what Agile means to me and to come up with 3 points. I’ve detailed those below:

• About setting up development teams to embrace change, they do this through intelligent solution design and with increased involvement with the customer to understand business priorities and associated requirements.
• About a process of continual planning rather than attempting to predict the outcome of everything in advance.
• About delivering increments of working software to the client, both to suffice business requirements sooner but also to allow them to understand the capabilities of the software that we can produce for them.

I’d be interested in hearing other peoples’ thoughts on this, I must confess that I do find it frustrating that people just don’t seem to get what to me, are the obvious advantages.

I also volunteered to one of the afore mentioned managers to write a document describing how I see Agile development working here. As that comes about I will post samples.

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Thanks

• Bluetooth Remote Control for Windows Mobile
  I’ve used this piece of software a number of times now, it is excellent
  (tags: windows mobile smartphone bluetooth remote control)
• User story – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  I’ve been doing some research on User Stories over the weekend as I will be facilitating a session on Tuesday at work to gather information for a project. This has been an interesting read.
  (tags: agile planning extreme programming user stories)
• Mountain Goat Software – Advantages of User Stories for Requirements – Agile Development Training and Consulting
  Another article that has proved very useful in explaining User Stories. This includes some good points that distinguish User Stories from requirements.
  (tags: agile planning user stories extreme programming)

I’ve been meaning to write an end of holiday post for some time (well, since having got back) and never really got further than putting some notes in a draft. Anyway, I was about to delete it but thought that I would post a selection of my memories to be added to as and when I come across more:

• Technology fuelled drive from Kelowna (Pilot was a wimp and bottled the landing in to Castlegar)
• Being sat in the hostel one night and asking Read if he wanted to go for a quick 10 pints in Nothing Special and waking up the next morning and feeling, well, feeling as you would expect
• A local riding past Rob practising switch and shouting “two words for you buddy, Hockey Pants” as Rob fell on his arse
• Eagle (which we were reliably informed by Charles the tail guide was a Golden one) flying alongside the cat
• Nath going stupidly big off of a lip in Roberts. Awesome, juuuust awesome.
• Riding in conditions like this when Craig was here
• Waste deep pow on the second cat skiing day
• The Ford Club Wagon
• Lifestyle in Whistler
• Sea Kyaking in Tofino

Anyway, all good memories, I look forward to returning to Red at some point soon. I can recommend it highly to anyone that is reading this looking for an opinion. On a good day the place is great, on a great day it is unbelievable.

• Notes from a Tool User: Scrum in a Nutshell Presentation
  Links to a Scrum presentation that will be useful to base mine on
  (tags: agile agileadoption scrum)
• Mountain Goat Software – An Overview of Scrum – Agile Development Training and Consulting
  Another Scrum presentation that I could use
  (tags: agile agileadoption scrum)
• Net Objectives: Executive briefing on why and how to become Agile (streamcast)
  A very useful resource for the presentation I have to do
  (tags: agile agileadoption scrum)
• Scrum et al. – Google Video
  Ken Schwaber presents at Google on Scrum whys and wherefores
  (tags: agile agileadoption scrum)

• src.pdf (application/pdf Object)
  Saw this posted on a blog and agree with that author that it is a useful 1 page guide to Scrum
  (tags: agile scrum)

• Skype 2.2 Beta for Windows Mobile
  Skype for Smartphones on WM6
  (tags: skype mobile smartphone windowsmobile6)