marick
Brian Marick
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![[*]](./images/grass/default_icon.gif) posted on 21 May 07 at 12:01 AM |
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Proposal: stick to Agile teams
At http://www.exampler.com/blog/2007/05/20/help-me-stir-things-up/, I proposed the following:
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The Agile Alliance should explicitly focus on helping members of Agile teams succeed, leaving concern with the larger organization to others.
“Members of the Agile team” is defined to be everyone who’d be expected to attend a team standup meeting: programmers, testers, user experience
designers, Scrum product owners or XP Customers, technical writers, and so on.
... see next topic
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Comments on this proposal?
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simonbaker
Simon Baker
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| posted on 21 May 07 at 04:02 AM |
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Agility is not sustainable unless the larger organisation is compatible and supportive. More often than not, the larger organisation needs to change,
otherwise agility exists inside a very fragile bubble within a hostile business environment. In my experience, agility has always failed due to larger
organisation issues. I think it would be remiss of the Agile Alliance to leave the concerns with the larger organisation to others.
The Agile Alliance needs to champion agility and the change required to support it within industries. Agility is never going to stick by supporting
only bottom-up initiatives through teams. There needs to be a proactive strategy of engagement with industry, corporate business leaders and decision
makers that challenges current thinking in organisations and aims to educate and dispel myths. Let's start trying to gain executive support for
agility and indirectly initiate top-down changes in organisations that helps nurture the adoption of agility.
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LaurentB
Laurent Bossavit
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| posted on 21 May 07 at 07:18 AM |
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The Agile Alliance should explicitly focus on helping members of Agile teams succeed, leaving concern with the larger organization to others.
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How is that different from whatever the AA is doing right now ? What will we see and hear that will signal this new focus of the AA ?
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marick
Brian Marick
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| posted on 21 May 07 at 10:35 AM |
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Agility is not sustainable unless the larger organisation is compatible and supportive. More often than not, the larger organisation needs to change,
otherwise agility exists inside a very fragile bubble within a hostile business environment.
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There are two approaches: 1) make the business environment less hostile, and 2) strengthen the bubble. I am proposing we concentrate on the second and
leave the first to, say, the APLN.
An alternate formulation: Have we (the AA) had appreciable success making the business environment less hostile? If not, what makes us think we're
going to change our success rate? Have we had more success strengthening the team? I think so - not nearly enough, but some.
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marick
Brian Marick
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| posted on 21 May 07 at 10:40 AM |
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What will we see and hear that will signal this new focus of the AA ?
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I am hoping that the other proposals signal that:
A smaller membership, more tightly bound through mutual service.
Focus on user groups (mutual support within a geographic area).
Actively advocating for the members.
Smaller conferences, focused on making those already skilled more indispensable.
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gdinwiddie
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Mood: hunky-dory
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| posted on 21 May 07 at 11:05 AM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by marick
The Agile Alliance should explicitly focus on helping members of Agile teams succeed, leaving concern with the larger organization to others.
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I hear in this proposal, (and the "Claim: execution of
Agile is the new problem") the assumption that Agile has succeeded in becoming a "respectable choice" and no further effort is needed to spread
it to other organizations. In the Mid-Atlantic USA area, I think there's still need to spread Agile to new organizations.
There's also a need to educate those who like the buzz, but want to adopt Agile without changing anything. I still hear business people (the
Customer) who don't want to take responsibility for the decisions (pushing the blame target down to the development level), and technical management
people who don't want rearrange things to support team-based, rather than individual-based, software development.
Much of the acceptance issues I see require the engagement of people above the team level. The "Claim: lack of success outside the team" may be true,
but I don't see that as a good argument to abandon such efforts. When something is hard, we should do more of it.
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simonbaker
Simon Baker
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| posted on 23 May 07 at 07:35 AM |
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Have we (the AA) had appreciable success making the business environment less hostile? If not, what makes us think we're going to change our success
rate? |
Good question. Has it been an objective of the AA, to date? If it hasn't, then I'm not surprised very little success in this area has been achieved.
On the frontline, we can help people understand and improve how they work and practice agile methods - this is definitely worth more investment. And
the work here should never stop. But lasting change will not be accomplished unless we address another root cause - the organisation environment and
culture. Agility will ultimately succeed only with a top-down approach.
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WayneMack
Wayne Mack
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| posted on 23 May 07 at 09:01 AM |
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I would like to reiterate SimonBaker's comment above. Agile development will affect the entire organization; it is much more than simply an
alternative plug-in to what we have done to date. Agile affects distribution. It is one thing to say that we have frequent iterations of release
ready software; it is quite another to actually distribute or deploy that software frequently. Agile affects sales and marketing. Instead of
salesmen just pushing whatever engineering produces, sales needs to be bringing back the inside information on desired features and guide
prioritization. Agile affects contracting. Instead of having fixed scope, single delivery contracts, we need to have indefinite scope, multiple
delivery contracts. The entire organization needs to be involved if agile is to provide actual benefit. Agile cannot just be this thing that the
software developers do and the rest of the organization is mostly indifferent.
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marick
Brian Marick
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| posted on 23 May 07 at 10:33 AM |
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I agree with Simon and Wayne that fixing the organization is important. The question is: given limited resources (mainly volunteer energy), how many
other things should the Agile Alliance not push in favor of trying to change the organization? Is the likelihood of success worth the opportunity
cost?
I don't think it is.
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rlbiddle
Robert Biddle
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| posted on 24 May 07 at 09:30 AM |
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I suspect that the "focus on the team" strategy is basically correct, but I want to make sure that we include work on the customer side. Some people
do not seem to include this work as in "the team", and other people say they do, but in fact still focus on programming. I am still puzzled as to
why the APLN is a separate organisation, as it seems to make this issue more difficult, as some customer-side people went there, while others did not.
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timhaughton
Tim Haughton
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| posted on 24 May 07 at 10:58 AM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by marick
I agree with Simon and Wayne that fixing the organization is important. The question is: given limited resources (mainly volunteer energy), how many
other things should the Agile Alliance not push in favor of trying to change the organization? Is the likelihood of success worth the opportunity
cost?
I don't think it is. |
I don't think it is either.
I do, however think it is vital that the members are well equipped to do this. Members should know the economic facts surrounding agile development,
and know how to present them. For an agile infection to spread, it makes sense for the troops on the ground to be the carriers, which means they need
to be excellent communicators.
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debhart
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| posted on 25 May 07 at 07:15 PM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by marick
... given limited resources (mainly volunteer energy), how many other things should the Agile Alliance not push in favor of trying to change the
organization? Is the likelihood of success worth the opportunity cost? |
So, we have unspent money and not enough volunteers, is that right? So, who says the work of the AA needs to be done only by volunteers?
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marick
Brian Marick
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| posted on 26 May 07 at 01:34 PM |
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Volunteers
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So, who says the work of the AA needs to be done only by volunteers?
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It's not. We have a 50% director / office manager, and website development is done by a paid contractor.
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debhart
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| posted on 06 Jun 07 at 09:20 AM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by marick
We have a 50% director / office manager, and website development is done by a paid contractor. |
But no Agile educators, swat team, even a "dear Abby" might help! :-)
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dmalloc
DavidH
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| posted on 13 Jun 07 at 08:15 AM |
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Establishing something like a Team structured, a quick reaction force, almost an intervention force to bring in quick, agile knoweldge and then build
from there seems to be something worthwhile and I encourage that in the comany I currently work for.
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PaulOldfield1
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| posted on 14 Jun 07 at 03:40 PM |
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| Quote: | Originally posted by dmalloc
Establishing something like a Team structured, a quick reaction force, almost an intervention force to bring in quick, agile knoweldge and then build
from there seems to be something worthwhile and I encourage that in the comany I currently work for. |
Sounds good, but sounds expensive.
Perhaps it would work on a "No win, no fee" basis?
Paul Oldfield
Capgemini, Telford UK
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