Thursday, April 26, 2007

Cubicles and Accountants, the new D&D

This will be short one covering mostly a complaint I have about some implementations of Agile software development processes. The number 1 thing that people should remember when using these is that Agile is about people and relationships (stolen from the words of Scrum) as opposed to that of the process itself. What all the Agile processes have done is create a framework to start from. Not saying that I have hit where this is the bad case. Every case I have had the opportunity to be a part of focuses in the right directions, but I have seen where the Scrum bible is consulted, or things are rigidly adhered to, with no benefit to the team. A happy team is a productive team.

I guess I can finish this off with a second side rant, that Agile should mean just that. Priorities change and you can flow with them. I have seen this work well enough. The problem is when other teams or other customers come in with requests, most agile methodologies have no way of dealing with these. Or they do, and that is to let the single main customer (aka boss) dictates the priorities. The secondary customers get screwed. This is very intuitive. However when the secondary customer has a very valuable proposition, it might behoove the teams to internalize this sort of work.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

andy sez:

I read through this post twice. It seems that, individually, I know what each and every word you used means, collectively, I have absolutely no idea what those two paragraphs say at all.

I suppose this means I won't be managing anything at a large corporation any time soon.

Unknown said...

Sorry Andy. It is even possible that the sentences themselves lack any coherent structure as my rants tend to take a life of their own.

And to any friendly coworkers that happen on this... THIS IS NOT OUR TEAM.

Amanda said...

I think it says....

Argyle socks are short and soft, and people can wear them. The number 1 thing people relate to is neither processed cheese, nor soccer teams. Steal from scum, but do not hit them. Instead, work to frame them. Free Tibet. If you ridgedly adhere to things in the scum bible, you will not find happiness.

When priorities change, and sock puppets turn mean, go with the flow. They work well enough. Their methodologies are inferior, yet intuitive. If you get screwed, the dictator (aka boss) will deal with them, and see to it that they be "hooved" and suffer internal injuries. Paul is dead.

ish said...

If you "hoove" a sock puppet, it dies.

(in case no one has corrupted you yet...
http://channel102.net/show.php?show=54
)

Amanda said...

Not quite the "hooved" I had envisioned, but way to make a connection there. See Aaron, this is the fun you miss when you don't go to troupe reunions ... imagine Bill gathering us all around a computer in the middle of the night....

Unknown said...

I started thinking of Pinatas instead of puppets and thought of this strip (referring to the video game Viva Pinata) http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=229