RE: Agile coming to our shop (supposedly)

I work in an Agile shop - and it hasn't killed me yet.
It is not new - read the agile software development wiki.
The manifesto is from 2001, but has ideas that go back decades.
Like everything in software dev it has many variations, many versions of "the right way", many opinions.
I would say it made more changes for the user community and the project leaders than the developers.
As in any methodology, there can be great, good, poor, and disastrous implementations.

We have 3 teams, and each implemented Agile in different ways, mostly due to the types of development we do: bug fix maintenance, enhancement of existing applications, full application replacement and customization.

One idea that has helped our team is to require each member to do a 30 minute presentation/discussion on a single Agile topic, two times each year. It has given each of us a deeper understanding of the variations of Agile, and we discuss our implementing or rejection of various options. I just did one on what makes a good (or bad) standup meeting, and from that we tweaked how ours works.

If you are not constantly refining how you do Agile, adjusting to changes, then I think you are not really Agile.

Jim Franz


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Justin Taylor
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2018 5:23 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Agile coming to our shop (supposedly)

Good point, many companies coopt "Agile" for a profit.

For me Agile is:
Agile Manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org/
Agile principles http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html



-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Helgren [mailto:pete@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2018 3:41 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Agile coming to our shop (supposedly)

I am on the backside of a three day conference that focused on microservices (Cloud native technologies, actually) but Agile raised it's ugly head because CI/CD is an integral part of microservice deployment and CI/CD is all about agile.

I highly recommend that you read through a report found here:

https://explore.versionone.com/state-of-agile/12th-annual-state-of-agile-report-overview
(download the report in PDF....)

One of the more interesting findings was the response to the statement:"Agile practices are enabling greater adaptability to market conditions" Only 4% of respondents said that was true, which says a lot about using agile to respond to the market. Since the vendor sponsoring the conference is deep into microservices and cloud native tech, they also admitted that their products, an ESB among them, contributes to the complexity of a microservice solution which they felt was hampering an agile workflow.

Features of agile have their place in "modern" development. More rapid iteration, working more closely with the end customer, breaking the work down into smaller pieces: All good stuff IMHO. But in my particular case, the organization I work for has adopted a bunch of agile practices and collaboration software ( Slack, Podio, Zoom conferencing, plus the usual email and texting) that seems to have added even more vectors of complexity to the development process. Give me an hour with an end user and sketchpad any day. Nothing facilitates communication better than face to face....

Like "microservices", the term agile has many nuances of meaning. Balancing process and programming is the key.

Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java
Twitter - Sys_i_Geek IBM_i_Geek

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