In Part 1 of Worlds Apart, I alluded to potential tensions between Agile Development teams and the business in the enterprise. If we are to find ways to reduce these tensions and start working more effectively together we need to first understand what’s behind them. Tensions result from people acting defensively. We all like to […]
As a developer I have some fundamental beliefs about work, acquired through literature, that I shared, and as a team we tested, and with some success we now believe, as fact, to be a better than what came before. As we continue to learn, test and measure we become more and more sure that what […]
It’s been a while since someone on our team was told what to do, even being asked is rare. When you truly value people over process and give people “the freedom of invention and initiative” it is far more effective to let them take rather than give work. The endemic suffering in the work place caused by […]
Egalitarian – Because we believe hierarchy is oppressive and respect everyone’s opinions equally Egoless – Because we have learnt the consensus of the team is the more important than the individual Adventurous - Because we have been given (or have taken) self direction, and with the support of the team, we have the courage to experiment with new […]
Since the late 19th century when Marconi started patenting other people’s ideas innovation stopped being collaborative and become competitive. The competitive culture spread top down, introducing formality and controlling methods to keep the top at the top and those at the bottom doing what they were told. In the 21st century agile teams are challenging the status quo and […]
A tweet from a friend who works as a project manager got me thinking about whether agile planning techniques are applicable in other contexts. We used to have project managers in software development who assumed that creating software was a predictable process, a misconception that stems from instinct rather than anything scientific, and I imagine this […]
Processes can be difficult mates, what type of relationship do you have with yours? Controlling No you don’t control your process it is controlling you. Devised by a power-hungry manager, designed to ensure you conform and waste your time with endless documentation, your process defines your work. The only thinking required is when you try […]
So while we sit or stand, self organising and continually improving, having won the battles that gave us our freedom, my thoughts turn to what lies beyond our team. In organisations that have let the hippys run wild in development and reaped the rewards do the managers lie awake wondering if these crazy principles and practices […]
In the past our developers and dedicated testers have worked fairly independently. I think this behaviour originates from a time when they were different teams with their own managers. Once a story has been completed by a pair of developers it is passed to QA for testing who use a mixture of scripted and exploratory testing. Introducing […]
